THE 

CAMBRIPQE UTeRfiTURE 
«««SER1ES«*« 

^-'^^ No. 3. Qt'"'^^ 

TENNYSON'S 
PRINCESS 



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ALFRED, LOUD TENNYSON. 



Number 3 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY 

BY 

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



EDITED BY * 

LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH, Ph.B. 

ASSOCIATE PKOFESSOK OF ENGLISH, COTNER UNIVERSITY, NEBRASKA 



ov noXX alXa noXv 



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BOSTON, U. S. A. 



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Copyright, 1899, 
By Lewis Worthington Smith. 






JUL 2 1899 



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PEEFAOE. 



The Princess did not take its final shape nntil 
1853, six years after its first publication, but this 
edition does not cencern itself with the earlier read- 
ings. Tennyson's son, in his memoir of his father, 
says : " He ' gave the people of his best,' and he 
usually wished that his best should remain without 
variorum readings, ' the chips of the workshop,' as he 
called them." The ordinary student and reader, it is 
believed, can have no interest in the changes through 
which a literary product goes before reaching its final 
form. In the introduction and notes an attempt has 
been made to direct the reader's attention to the vitaL 
things in Tennyson's art and to a just conception of 
his point of view as a student of life. To these it is 
due that the poem has a place in literature, and the 
consideration of them is, therefore, the thing of first 
importance. 

Lincoln, Neb., March 27, 1899. 



COI^^TEI^TS. 



Introduction 


PAGE. 

i 


I. 


Life of Tennyson 


i 


II. 


Comment 


V 


III. 


Suggestions for Study 


X 


IV. 


Bibliography .... 


xii 


V. 


Chronology .... 


. xiii 


The Princess . . . . . 


. . . 1 


Notes 




. 141 


Index 


TO Notes 


. 187 



IIsTTRODTJCTIOK. 



I. 

Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, 
England, August 6, 1809. His father, rector of Somersby 
and Wood Enderby, was a man of scholarly attainments, 
and his strong intellectuality was an important factor in 
the life of the young Tennysons. Alfred's two elder 
brothers, Frederick and Charles, gave evidence of poetic 
abilities at an early age. What they learned of art, 
science, the languages, and mathematics before going to 
Cambridge, they learned of their father, who also criticized 
Alfred's early verses, being himself a poet who "could 
write regular meter very skilfully." In the elder Tenny- 
son's library were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, 
Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cer- 
vantes, Bunyan, and Buff on, and in these they took par- 
ticular delight. Tennyson's mother was, as Edward 
Fitzgerald wrote, " one of the most innocent and tender- 
hearted ladies I ever saw ; " a mother devoted to her 
husband and children. 

Somersby, where the Tennysons lived during Alfred's 
boyhood, was a hamlet of but fifty or sixty inhabitants, in 

(i) 



ii THE PRINCESS. 

an isolated part of Lincolnshire, a region dotted with 
little villages and crossed by a range of chalky hills, the 
Wold. Here Tenn^'son learned that love of nature which 
is so real and vitalizing a part of his poetry. Here, too, 
at his father's summer home at Mablethorpe on the Lin- 
colnshire coast, he drew inspiration from the sea, an en- 
during inspiration, as may be understood from his Cross- 
ing the Bar, in some respects the noblest poem of the 
century. Wordsworth, Tennyson's predecessor in the 
laureate's office, had gone to nature with a like affec- 
tion, but he had not reached the sureness of vision of 
Tennyson's saner and richer genius. Of Tenu} son, Aubrey 
De Yere wrote, " It was easy to see that to discern the 
Beautiful in all around us, and to reveal that beauty to 
others, was his special poetic vocation," and this is the 
essential truth for us to realize about him. It is not that 
he adorns his ideas with beautiful images ; so much, with- 
in the limits of good taste, he does, but that a truth of art 
or nature can not, as he sees it, become poetry until it has 
become beauty as well. He is at once the artist and the 
seer. 

In 1827, Tennyson and his brother Charles published 
Poems by Two Brothers, the book being brought out by 
Jackson of Louth, the village where, when he was seven 
years old, Tennyson had been sent to school. The poems, 
for which they received £20 from the publisher, were of 
extraordinary performance and promise; those by Alfred, 
the younger, having been written between the ages of fifteen 
and seventeen. They attracted, however, practically no 



INTRODUCTION. ill 

attention. A year later, both Alfred and Charles matricu- 
lated at Cambridge, where Alfred was next year to win 
the Chancellor's medal for his poem Tvnbucloo. Here 
among other friends to be famous later, — Spetlding, Alford, 
Trench, Merivale, and others, — he grew into companion- 
ship with Arthur Hallam, son of Henry Hallam, the dis- 
tinguished historian. His strong personal attacliment to 
Hallam, whose high intellectual powers were full of re- 
markable promise, an attachment which has, perhaps, had 
no parallel, was strengthened by the latter's engagement 
to his sister Emily ; and when at the early age of twenty- 
two, Hallam died in Vienna, his grief was unbounded. 
Out of this sorrow grew the noblest tribute to human 
friendship the world has ever known. In Memoriam. 
This was not published until 1850. Several other vol- 
umes had then appeared, among them, in 1847, The 
Princess. 

General recognition of his genius came but slowly, so 
slowly that he was fain to give up the thought of success 
with his English public. Some few there were who saw 
at once the possibilities growing in him, and the warmth 
of their encouragement kept him to his purpose. It was 
charg-ed against him that he was dull, and then as now 
the cheap commonplace of such things as the May Qneen, 
Lady Clara Vere de Vere, To Christopher North, and 
Darling Room, passed with some critics for the measure 
of his genius. He seemed to many to deal only with feel- 
ings that lie on the surface, and his repose, his grace, his 
careful attention to beauty of form appeared to indicate the 



ir THE PRINCESS. 

lack of emotional depth rather than the serene nobility of 
a great soul. That Tennyson wrote many things alto- 
gether unworthy of him is unfortunately true, but this 
should not lessen the estimate of his real achievements. 

For ten years after the publication of the 1832 volume, 
Tennyson was silent, not because he ceased Avriting, but 
because his poetrj^ had not so far been favorably received 
by the reviewers. He was through life extremely sensi- 
tive, little fitted for the task of fighting his way to public 
favor. The death of the elder Tennyson, recalling Alfred 
from college, had left the family in straitened circum- 
stances, and later Alfred lost his all m a venture in which 
he was too easily induced to have faith. For long j^ears 
his prospects were so nncertian that he was forced defi- 
nitely to l)reak off his attentions to Emily Sellvvood, whom 
later, when he became assured that he could support her, 
he married. These years were full of discouragements, 
but with his marriage, as he is reported to have said, 
peace came into his life. Not long after his marriage he 
settled at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, and with this 
home it is tliat we especially associate him. 

Tennyson gave himself to ]iis art with a singleness and 
sincerity of purpose that is remarkable. The story of his 
life is simi)ly the story of that devotion and the storj- of 
his friendships. Among his friends were many of the 
most distinguished men of his time, Browning, Carlyle, 
Spencer, Fitzgerald, Thackeray, and in their letters ap- 
pears the warm personal regard which they entertained 
for him. After the publication of In Memoriam he was, 



INTRODUCTION. v 

until he died, the acknowledged head of English poetry. 
Though he had previously refused a baronetcy, in 1884 
he consented to be made a peer, receiving the title of 
Baron of Aldworth and Farringford. He died at Aid worth, 
his home in Sussex, October 6, 1892, and was buried in 
Westminster Abbey. 

II. 

George Saintsbury in his " History of Nineteenth Cen- 
tury Literature," says : 

^'- The Princess is undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if 
not exactly in comedy, in a vein verging towards the comic — a 
side on which he was not so well equipped for offense or for 
defense as on the other. But it is a masterpiece. Exquisite as 
its author's verse always is, it was never more exquisite than 
here, whether in the blank verse, or in the (superadded) lyrics, 
while none of his deliberately arranged plays contains characters 
half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Lady Blanche 
and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two Kings, and even of one or 
two others. And that unequalled dream-faculty of his, which 
has been more than once glanced at, enabled him to carry off 
whatever was fantastical in the conception with almost un- 
paralleled felicity. It may or may not be agreed that the 
question of the equality of the sexes is one of the distinguishing 
questions of this century ; and some of those who would give, 
it that position may or may not maintain, if they think it worth 
while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their opponents 
may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But this 
very difference will point the unbiassed critic to the same con- 
clusion, that Tennyson has hit the golden mean ; while that, 



vi THE PRINCESS. 

whatever he has hit or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is 
golden, no one w^ho is competent will doubt. Such lyrics as 
'The splendor falls' and 'Tears, idle tears,' such blank verse 
as that of the closing passage, would raise to the topmost 
heights of poetry whatever subject it was spent upon." 

But it is to be understood that The Princess is not the 
greatest effort in the whole range of Tennyson's poetry. 
That distinction must very probably be given to the Idylls 
of the King, in which the legends of King Arthur and his 
Round Table are rehabilitated in modem verse and filled 
with a new meaning. Though The PrHncess displays that 
reverence for w^omanhood which was so important a part 
of Tennyson's poetic endowment, yet this is voiced in a 
larger way in the Idylls. Tennyson was early familiar 
with the stories of Arthurian romance as told in Malory's 
l)ages ; and the Arthurian .country in the south of England 
he traversed on foot, learning its traditions from the \\\)b of 
the common people, and making close acquaintance with 
its wealth of antiquities. This material and this inspiration 
slowly took shape in the Idylls, of which the first were 
l^ublished in 1869, and others at varying intervals later. 

In his attempts in the dramatic form, Tennyson has 
not been so happy. Queen Mary, Harold, The Foresters, 
lack somewhere the fine fire that burns in the Idylls and 
in his shorter pieces. His wonderful power of condensed 
expression, his illuminating imagination, his vivid sense 
of color and form and of every phase of delicate or mag- 
nificent beauty, his mastery of suggestive phrasing, were 
not just the qualities to enable him to ^^ut a story in the 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

moving form of drama. His own spirit was too high, too 
meditativ^e, his art too severely polished for the swift 
action, the lightning play of emotion of the drama. 

But his range was yet a wide one. Ftom the delicate 
grace of Mariana ov The Lady of Shalott, from the passion 
of Q£nonc or The Lover''s Tale, from the Voyage to Tithonus, 
The Defense of Lucknow, or Ulysses, is surely a long way. 
No other poet of the century has had so universal a sym- 
pathy, has touched ujjon so many themes with so sure a 
mastery of them as he. 

Turning to our immediate purpose, consideration of 
'The Princess, we should remember that at the time of its 
publication English ideas of the education of woman were 
very j^rimitive. Tennyson was progressive always, flam- 
ing at time-sanctioned wrongs, looking " into the future 
far as human eye could see," and from that vision seeking 
to correct the abuses of the present ; and this abuse the 
line reverence of his regard for womanhood could but look 
upon with quickened indignation. Tennyson's son, in his 
memoir of his father, says : 

' ' His friends report my father to have said that the two 
great social questions impending in England were, ' the hous- 
ing and education of the poor man before making him our 
master, and the higher education of women,' and that the 
sooner woman linds out before the great educational movement 
begins, that ' woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse,' the 
better it will be for the progress of the world." 

The poem has clearly been written from this point of 



viii THE PRINCESS. 

view. It is an almost complete summing up of what may 
be said on one phase of the subject of the relation of man 
and woman, interpenetrated with tlie chivalrous sense of 
the nobility of woman's diverse part in the life she shares 
with man. 

But apart from the theme and the spirit that animates 
it, the art of the poem is notable. The meter is the iambic 
pentameter of Shakespeare and Milton. Occasionally a 
line varies from the typical line by the addition of an ex- 
tra syllable or by a misplaced accent, but this relief to the 
monotony of the verse has almost always a further specific 
purpose. A few illustrations of this artistic employment 
of variation may serve to make the reader observant of 
other instances of the same thing in the course of the poem. 

"Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands." 

The delay in movement caused by the transfer of the 
accent from he?' to lo7ig serves to emphasize, not onl}?^ the 
adjective lo7i-g, but also the impression of the whole line, 
and a like effect is to be noticed in the following. 

" That on the stretched forefinger of all Time." 

The employment of two light syllables for one is very 
common throughout the poem, sometimes serving to make 
the verse quicker and brighter, and again merely useful 
in giving variety to the rhythm. Often the concluding 
vowel of the first of these two syllables is followed by an 
initial vowel in the other, in which case the two become 
more nearly one syllable, as in the following lines. 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

" The Princess ; liker to the ii? habitant." 

" Makes noble through the sensitoits organism." 

" ' And glean your scattered sapience.' Then once more." 

AVhen a consonant intervenes it may be one that the 
voice passes over lightly. 

" Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break." 
*' Immersed in rich f or eslmdowings of the world." 
" Less i>rosperously the second suit obtained. " 

Sometimes an accent coming irregularly in the line 
makes the word in which it occurs emphatic. So it is in 
this first line, in which the accent is transferred from the 
second syllable of the line to the first. 

" Tenderness touch by touch, and last to these, 
Love like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 
By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first." 

And in the last line note that some, cold, and the first 
syllable of morniing are all accented, increasing the dead- 
ening weight of the line, as cold is deadening. 

The student of Tennyson Avill hardly fail to note the 
music of pure tone that is so abundant in his verse. The 
intercalary songs are particularly remarkable for their rich 
and mellow succession of vowels and for the tonal beauty 
of the consonants. Further, Tennyson employs the old 
Anglo-Saxon device of alliteration very freel}^ The allit- 
erative letters are printed in italics in the illustrative 
quotations that follow. 



X THE PRINCESS. 

" The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the iakes." 

" To leap the rotten pales of prejudice." 

" With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, 
And sweet grirl-grraduates in their grolden hair." 

" I smote him on the breast; he started up; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sacked." 

' ' Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer. ' ' 

The student of Tennyson must always find his use of 
imaginative words and expressions one of the never-lessen- 
ing marvels of his work. The lamp back of the Princess 
droo})s rather than hangs, as if animated and doing 
homage ; the preeminence of man is gray ; the day Jled 
on; litanies are not soft or sweet or mellow, but stiver; 
Lady Psyche's tears when she meets her brother are 
gracious dew ; a flash of pain in Ida's face tortures her 
tnouth. But instances need not be multiplied ; the reader 
will pass under the spell of them as he finds them in the 
poem itself. 



III. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 

A note-book for comment should be at hand in the read- 
ing, and in this notes upon these several aspects of the 
poem should have prominence : first, its wealth of figures ; 
second, its music as sound merely, including rhythm, 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

vowel quality, alliterative and imitative tone-color (see 
note on line 41, Part II.); third, character study; and 
fourth, the art displayed in the management of the plot. 
Do not be content with observing that Tennyson has em- 
ployed figurative language, but analyze the figure until 
you know in any given case just the defect in it or its 
peculiar beauty. Words that are used in a suggestive and 
imaginatively poetic way should be noted. In studying 
the character painting, observe all the hints of mood in the 
actors in tlie story, and write out what these imply in 
their feeling. Why (Prologue 1. 125) does Walter pat 
Lilians head? Why does she (1. 137) shake the hand 
aside ? Why " the patron" ? What mood is indicated by 
the tapping of her foot (1. 149)? What mood again in 
line 191? And what are the things that you now know 
of Lilia beyond what the poet has directly told you ? Has 
Tennyson made you know her by his account of her, by 
letting 3'ou see what she does and says, or in this second 
way through the aid of suggesting and directing comment 
of his own ? In such fashion study every character in the 
poem, making notes of your findings as you go along. 
Afterwards, you can sum them up separately for each one, 
and decide whether the portrait is true and consistent 
throughout ; in thus reviewing your conclusions the char- 
acters will become more definite in your own mind. If 
the book is used in the class-room, the teacher should 
frame questions that will develop these things . Comments 
in the notes call attention to some matters worthy of con- 
sideration in the handling of the plot, but others are left to 



xii THE PRINCESS. 

be developed by the questioning of the teacher or by the 
observant study of the reader. 

In addition to the consideration of the art of the poem, 
the subject matter should be taken into account. Re- 
member that it was written over fifty years ago, and in 
the light of that remembrance note what opinions are 
original, as you judge, or the expression of an original 
point of view. Make a note also of such sentiments as 
appear to you to be a voicing of Tennyson's own spirit, 
rather than solely something put into the mouth of one of 
the characters. Endeavor as far as possible to tind the 
poet's own feeling and attitude towards every question 
that he touches. 

IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The MacMillan Co., New York, publishes the standard 
edition of Tennyson's poems in various forms from a com- 
plete one-volume edition at a moderate price, to library 
editions in several volumes. The following books will be 
found helpful collateral reading : 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson : A Memoir by his Son. 
The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Yan Dyke. 
Tennyson and his Relation to Modern Life. S. A. 

Brooke. 
Tennyson: A Biographical Sketch. Alfred Waugh, 
Tennyson's Debt to Environment. W. G. Ward. 
Tennyson : Poet, Philosopher, Idealist. J. C. Walters. 
Victorian Poets. E. C. Stedman, 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

V. CHRONOLOGY. 

1809. Birth, August 6, at Somersby. 

1827. Poems by Two Brothers. 

1828. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge. 

1831. Left Cambridge in February. His father died 

in March. 
1833 . Poems. Appeared before the opening of the 
year and so have sometimes been called the edition of '32. 
1812. Poems. Successive editions appeared in '43, 

'45, '46, '48, '50, '51 and '53. 
1845. Received a pension of £200 through Sir Robert 

Peel. 
1847. The Princess. Successive editions appeared in 
'48, '50, '51, and '53, in this last receiving its final form. 
1850. In Memoriam. Married Emily Sellwood. Laure- 

ateship given by the Queen. 
1855. Maud and Other Poems. 
1859. First four Idylls of the King. 
18G4. Enoch Arden. 
1869. The Holy Grail and Other Poems. 
1875-'84. Queen Mary, Harold, The Cup, The Falcon, 

The Promise of May, Becket. * 
1885. Tiresias and Other Poems. 
1889. Demeter and Other Poems. 
1892. The Foresters, Robin Hood, and Maid Marian. 
Died October 6. Buried in Westminster Abbey. 
The Death of (Enone, Akbar's Dream and Other 
Poems . 



THE PEIlsrOESS 

A MEDLEY. 



PROLOGUE. 

Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people : thither flock'd at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 
The neighboring borough with their Institute 
Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college, visiting the son,— the son 
A Walter too, — with others of our set, 
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-place. 

And me that morning Walter showed the house, 
Greek, set with busts : from vases in the hall 
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, 
Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 
Carved stones of the Abbey -ruin in the park. 
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time ; 
And on the tables every clime and age 



2 THE PRINCESS. 

Jumbled together ; celts and calumets, 
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 
20 Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere. 
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm : and higher on the walls. 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung. 

And " this," he said " was Hugh's at Agincourt ; 
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon : 
A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle 
With all about him" — which he brought, and I 
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, — 
30 Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings 
AVho laid about them at their wills and died ; 
And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd 
Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate. 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. 

" miracle of women," said the book, 
" noble heart who, being strait-besieged 
By this wild king to force her to his wish. 
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a soldier's death. 
But now when all was lost or seem VI as lost — 
40 Her stature more than mortal in the burst 



PROLOGUE. 3 

Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire — 
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, 
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt, 
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels, 
And some were whelm'd with missiles of the wall. 
And some were push'd with lances from the rock, 
And part were drown'd within the whirling brook : 
miracle of noble womanhood ! " 

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; 
And, I all rapt in this, " Come out," he said, 50 

"To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest." We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down thro' the park : strange was the sight to me ; 
For all the sloping pasture murmur' d, sown 
With happy faces and with holiday. 
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : 
The patient leaders of their Institute 
Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone 
And drew, from butts of water on the slope, eo 

The fountain of the moment, playing, now 
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls, 
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball 
Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down 
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired 



4 THE PRINCESS. 

A cannon; Echo answer'd in her sleep 
From hollow fields : and here were telescopes 
For azure views ; and there a group of girls 
In circle waited, whom the electric shock 

70 Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter : round the lake 
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied 
And shook the lilies : perch'd about the knolls 
A dozen angry models jetted steam : 
A petty railway ran : a fire-balloon 
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 
And dropt a fairy parachute and j)ast : 
And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph 
They flash'd a saucy message to and fro 
Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 

80 Went hand in hand with Science ; otherwhere 
Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamor bowl'd 
And stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd about 
Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 
Arranged a country dance, and flew thro' light 
And shadow, while the twangling violin 
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead 
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 

Strange was the sight and smacking of the time ; 
90 And long we gazed, but satiated at length 



PROLOGUE. 5 

Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy-claspt, 

Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire, 

Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave 

The park, the crowd, the house ^ but all within 

The sward was trim as any garden lawn : 

And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, 

And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 

From neighbor seats : and there was Ralph himself, 

A broken statue propt against the wall. 

As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, loo 

Half child half woman as she was, had wound 

A scarf of orange round the stony helm, 

And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk. 

That made the old warrior from his ivied nook 

Glow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast 

Shone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests, 

And there we join'd them : then the maiden Aunt 

Took this fair day for text, and from it preach'd 

An universal culture for the crowd. 

And all things great ; but we, unworthier, told ' "^ 

Of college : he had climb'd across the spikes, 

And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars. 

And he had breath'd the Proctor's dogs ; and one 

Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men, 

But honeying at the whisper of a lord ; 

And one the Master, as a rogue in grain 

Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory. 



6 THE PRINCESS. 

But while they talk'd, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought 
120 My book to mind: and opening this I read 
Of old Sir Kalph a page or two that rang 
With tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, 
And much I praised her nobleness, and " Where," 
Ask'd Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay 
Beside him) " lives there such a woman now ? " 

Quick answer'd Lilia " There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention beats them down : 
It is but bringing up ; no more than that : 
130 You men have done it : how I hate you all ! 
Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were 
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then. 
That love to keep us children ! I wish 
That I were some great princess, I would build 
Far off from men a college like a man's. 
And I would teach them all that men are taught ; 
We are twice as quick ! " And here she shook aside 
The hand that play'd the patron with her curls. 

And one said smiling " Pretty were the sight 
140 If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans. 



PROLOGUE. 7 

And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. 
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, 
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph 
Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, 
If there were many Lilias in the brood, 
However deep you might embower the nest. 
Some boy would spy it." 

At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tiny silken-sandall'd foot : 
" That's your light way ; but I would make it death i50 
Eor any male thing but to peep at us." 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd ; 
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, 
And sweet as English air could make her, she : 
But Walter hail'd a score of names upon her. 
And " petty Ogress," and " ungrateful Puss," 
And swore he long'd at college, only long'd. 
All else was well, for she-society. 
They boated and they cricketed ; they talk'd 
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics ; iso 

They lost their weeks ; they vext the souls of deans ; 
They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends, 
And caught the blossom of the flying terms. 
But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, 
The little hearth-flower, Lilia. Thus he spoke. 



170 



THE PRINCESS. 

Part banter, part affection. 

" True/' she said, 
" We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd us much. 
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did." 

She held it out ; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, 
And takes a lady's finger with all care, 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm. 
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd 
And wrung it. " Doubt my word again ! " he said. 
" Come, listen ! here is proof that you were miss'd : 
We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read ; 
And there we took one tutor as to read : 
The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square 
Were out of season : never man, I think, 
180 So moulder'd in a sinecure as he : 

For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet. 

And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms. 

We did but talk you over, pledge you all 

In wassail ; often, like as many girls — 

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home — 

As many little trifling Lilias — play'd 

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here. 

And ivhafs my thought and ^vhen and where and ho^v, 

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth 



PBOLOGUE. 9 

As here at Christmas." 

She remember'd that : 190 

A pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these — what kind of tales did men tell men, 
She wonder' d, by themselves ? 

A half-disdain 
Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips ; 
And Walter nodded at me ; " He began, 
The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind ? 
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, 
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the fire in winter." 

" Kill him now. 
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too," 
Said Lilia ; " Why not now ? " the maiden Aunt. 
" Why not a summer's as a winter's tale ? 
A tale for summer as befits the time, 
And something it should be to suit the place. 
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath, 
Grave, solemn ! " 

Walter warp'd his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd 
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, 



10 THE PRINCESS. 

Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt 
(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face 
With color) turn'd to me with " As you will ; 
Heroic if you will, or what you will, 
Or be yourself your hero if you will." 

" Take Lilia, then, for heroine," clamored he, 
" And make her some great Princess, six feet high. 
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you 

220 The Prince to win her ! " 

" Then follow me, the Prince, 
I answer'd, ''each be hero in his turn ! 
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. — 
Heroic seems our Princess as required — 
But something made to suit with Time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 
For which the good Sir Kalph had burnt them all - 

230 This were a medley ! we should have him back 
Who told the ' Winter's tale ' to do it for us. 
No matter : we will say whatever comes. 
And let the ladies sing us, if they will. 
From time to time, some ballad or a song 
To give us breathing-space." 



PART I. 11 



So I began, 
And the rest follow'd ; and the women sang 
Between the rougher voices of the men, 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind : 
And here I give the story and the songs. 



I. 



A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face. 
Of temper amorous, as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl, 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star. 

There lived an ancient legend in our house. 
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt 
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, 
Dying, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall : 
For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less. 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven knows what 
On a sudden in the midst of men and day, 



12 THE PRINCESS. 

And while I walk'd and talk'd as heretofore, 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts, 
And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane, 

20 And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd " catalepsy." 
My mother pitying made a thousand prayers ; 
My mother was as mild as any saint, 
Half-canonized by all that look'd on her. 
So gracious was her tact and tenderness : 
But my good father thought a king a king ; 
He cared not for the affection of the house ; 
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand 
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands 
Eeach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass 

30 For judgment. 

JSTow it chanced that I had been. 
While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd 
To one, a neighboring Princess : she to me 
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf 
At eight years old ; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 
And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; 
And still I wore her picture by my heart. 
And one dark tress ; and all around them both 
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen- 



PART I. 13 

But when the days drew nigh that I shoukl wed, 4o 
My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these brought back 
A present, a great labor of the loom ; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind : 
Besides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 
He said there was a compact ; that was true : 
But then she had a will ; was he to blame ? 
And maiden fancies ; loved to live alone 
Among her women ; certain, would not wed. 

That morning in the presence room I stood so 

With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : 
The first, a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts 
Of revel ; and the last, my other heart. 
And almost my half-self, for still we moved 
Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye. 

Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face 
Grow long and troubled like the rising moon. 
Inflamed with wrath : he started on his feet, 
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent 6o 

The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 
From skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware 
That he would send a hundred thousand men, 



14 THE PRINCESS. 

And bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew'd 

The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen, 

Communing with his captains of the war. 

At last I spoke. '^ My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error lies 
In this report, this answer of a king, 

70 Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable : 
Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, 
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame. 
May rue the bargain made." And Florian said: 
" I have a sister at the foreign court, 
Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know, 
Who wedded with a nobleman from thence : 
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear. 
The lady of three castles in that land : 
Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean." 

80 And Cyril whisper'd : " Take me with you too." 
Then laughing " What, if these weird seizures come 
Upon you in those lands, and no one near 
To point you out the shadow from the truth ! 
Take me : I'll serve you better in a strait ; 
I grate on rusty hinges here : " but " No ! " 
Roar'd the rough king, " you shall not ; we ourself 
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 
In iron gauntlets : break the council up." 



PART I. 15 

But when the council broke, I rose and past 
Tlii-o' the wild woods that hung about the town ; 9o 

Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out ; 
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed 
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees : 
What were those fancies ? wherefore break her troth ? 
Proud look'd the lips : but while I meditated 
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, 
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild woods together ; and a Voice 
Went with it, " Follow, follow, thou shalt win." 

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month loo 

Became her golden shield, I stole from court 
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived. 
Cat-footed thro' the town and half in dread 
To hear my father's clamor at our backs 
With Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night ; 
But all was quiet : from the bastion'd walls 
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt, 
And flying reach'd the frontier : then we crost 
To a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange. 
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, no 

We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers. 
And in the imperial palace found the king. 



16 THE PRINCESS. 

His name was Gama ; crack'd and small his voice, 
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines ; 
A little dry old man, without a star, 
Not like a king : three days he feasted us, 
And on the fourth I spake of why we came, 
And my betroth'd. " You do us, Prince," he said, 

1-30 Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 

"All honor. We remember love ourselves 
In our sweet youth : there did a compact pass 
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony — 
I think the year in which our olives fail'd. 
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart, 
With my full heart : but there were widows here. 
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 
They fed her theories, in and out of place 
Maintaining that with equal husbandry 

130 The woman were an equal to the man. 

They harp'd on this ; with this our banquets rang ; 
Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ; 
Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 
To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held, 
Was all in all : they had but been, she thought. 
As children ; they must lose the child, assume 
The woman : then, Sir, awful odes she wrote. 
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of, 



PART I. 17 

But all she is and does is awful ; odes 

About this losing of the child ; and rhymes 140 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason : these the women sang ; 

And they that know such things — I sought but peace; 

No critic I — would call them masterpieces : 

They master'd me. At last she begg'd a boon, 

A certain summer-palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier : I said no, 

Yet being an easy man, gave it : and there, 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more i50 

We Imow not, — only this : they see no men, 

Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins 

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed 

Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but since 

(And I confess with right) you think me bound 

In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 

Almost at naked nothing." 

Thus the king ; leo 

And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur 
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets 



18 THE PRINCESS. 

But chafing me on fire to find my bride) 
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 
Many a long league back to the North. At last 
From hills, that look'd across a land of hope, 
We dropt with evening on a rustic town 
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, 
170 Close at the boundary of the liberties ; 

There, enter'd an old hostel, call'd mine host 
To council, plied him with his richest wines. 
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king. 

He with a long low sibilation, stared 
As blank as death in marble ; then exclaim'd 
Averring it was clear against all rules 
For any man to go : but as his brain 
Began to mellow, " If the king," he said, 
" Had given us letters, was he bound to speak ? 
180 The king would bear him out ; " and at the last — 
The summer of the vine in all his veins — 
" No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 
She once had passed that way ; he heard her speak : 
She scared him ; life ! he never saw the like ; 
She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave : 
And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there ; 
He always made a point to post with mares ; 
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys : 



PART I. 19 

The land, he understood, for miles about 

Was till'd by women ; all the swine were sows, i9o 

And all the dogs " — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flash' d thro' me which I clothed in act, 
Eemembering how we three presented Maid, 
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, 
In masque or pageant at my father's court. 
We sent mine host to purchase female gear ; 
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake 
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp 
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 
We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe 200 

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds, 
And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We follow' d up the river as we rode, 
And rode till midnight when the college lights 
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse 
And linden alley : then we past an arch. 
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 
From four wing'd horses dark against the stars ; 
And some inscription ran along the front, 
But deep in shadow : further on we gain'd 210 

A little street half garden and half house ; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 



20 THE PRINCESS. 

Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 

On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 

Of fountains spouted up and showering down 

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose : 

And all about us peal'd the nightingale, 

Eapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 
220 By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth 
With constellation and with continent, 
Above an entry : riding in, we call'd ; 
A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wench 
Came running at the call, and lielp'd us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd, 
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave 
Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost 
In laurel : her we ask'd of that and this, 
And who were tutors. "Lady Blanche," she said, 
230 " And Lady Psyche." '' Which was prettiest, 

Best-natured ? " " Lady Psyche." " Hers are we," 
One voice, we cried ; and I sat down and wrote, 
In such a hand as when a field of corn 
Bows all its ears before the roaring East : 

" Three ladies of the Northern empire pray 
Your Highness would enroll them with your own, 



PART I. 21 

As Lady Psyche's pupils." 

This I seal'd : 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, 
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes : 240 

I gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; 
And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd 
To float about a glimmering night, and watch 
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell 
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. 



22 THE PRINCESS. 



II. 



As thro' the land at eve we went, 

And plucked the ripen'd ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out I know not why, 

And kiss'd again with tears. 
And blessino-s on the fallino; out 

That all the more endears, 
When we fall out with those we love 

And kiss again with tears ! 
For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave. 

We kiss'd again with tears. 



PART 11. 23 

At break of day the College Portress came : 

She brought us Academic silks, in hue 

The lilac, with a silken hood to each, 

And zoned with gold ; and now when these were on, 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, 

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited : out we paced, 

I first, and following thro' the porch that sang 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths lo 

Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 

Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes, 

Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst ; 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 

Or book or lute ; but hastily we past, 

And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat. 
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, 
All beauty compass'd in a female form, 20 

The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, 
Than our man's earth ; such eyes were in her head, 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
Fronx over her arch'd brows, with every turn 



24 THE PRINCESS. 

Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands, 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

a Y^Q giyg jQ^^ welcome : not without redound 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come, 

30 The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, 

And that full voice which circles round the grave. 

Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 

What ! are the ladies of your land so tall ? " 

" We of the court " said Cyril. " From the court " 

She answer'd, " then ye know the Prince ? " and he : 

" The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 

One rose in all the world, your Highness that. 

He worships your ideal : " she replied : 

" We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear 

40 This barren verbiage, current among men. 
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 
As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, 
We dream not of him : when we set our hand 
To this great work, we purposed with ourself 
Never to wed. You likewise will do well, 
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 
The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so, 

50 Some future time, if so indeed you will, 



PART II. 25 

You may with those self-styled our lords ally 
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale." 

At those high words, we conscious of ourselves. 
Perused the matting ; then an officer 
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 
Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men; 
And many more, which hastily subscribed, 
We enter'd on the boards : and " Now," she cried, 60 

" Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! 
Our statues ! — not of those that men desire, 
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she 
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 
The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 
The Carian Artemisia strong in war. 
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, 
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 70 

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 
Convention, since to look on noble forms 
Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism 
That which is higher. lift your natures up : 
Embrace our aims : work out your freedom. Girls, 



26 THE PRINCESS. 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : 
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, 
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 
And slander, die. Better not be at all 

80 Than not be noble. Leave us : you may go : 
To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 
The fresh arrivals of the week before; 
For they press in from all the provinces, 
And fill the hive." 

She spoke, and bowing waved 
Dismissal : back again we crost the court 
To Lady Psyche's : as we enter'd in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 

90 Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, 

A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed. 
And on the hither side, or so she look'd. 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child. 
In shining draperies, headed like a star, 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 
Aglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : 
Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame 
That whisper'd " Asses' ears," among the sedge, 
" My sister." " Comely, too, by all that's fair," 

100 Said Cyril. " hush, hush ! " and she began. 



PART II. 27 

" This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the centre set the starry tides, 
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets : then the monster, then the man ; 
Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins. 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest." 

Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon no 

As emblematic of a nobler age ; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; 
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 
Of empire, and the woman's state in each, 
How far from just ; till warming with her theme 
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique 
And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet 
With much contempt, and came to chivalry : 
When some respect, however slight, was paid 120 

To woman, superstition all awry : 
However then commenced the dawn : a beam 
Had slanted forward, falling in a land 
Of promise ; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, 
Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared 



28 THE PRINCESS. 

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, 
Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert 
None lordlier than themselves but that which made 
Woman and man. She had founded ; they must build. 

130 Here might they learn whatever men were taught : 
Let them not fear : some said their heads were less : 
Some men's were small ; not they the least of men ; 
For often fineness compensated size : 
Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew 
With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; 
He took advantage of his strength to be 
First in the field : some ages had been lost ; 
But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life 
Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 

140 Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth 
The highest is the measure of the man, 
And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 
Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 
But Homer, Plato, Yerulam ; even so 
With woman : and in arts of government 
Elizabeth and others ; arts of war 
The peasant Joan and others ; arts of grace 
Sappho and others vied with any man : 
And, last not least, she who had left her place, 

150 And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow 
To use and power on this Oasis, lapt 



PART II. 29 

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 
Of ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy 
Dilating on the future ; " everywhere 
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world, 
Two in the liberal offices of life. 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science, and the secrets of the mind ; i^o 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : 
And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth 
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls. 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." 

She ended here, and beckon'd us : the rest 
Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 
Began to address us, and was moving on 
In gratulation, till as when a boat 
Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice 
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, i70 

" My brother ! " " Well, my sister." " 0," she said, 
" What do you here ? and in this dress ? and these ? 
Why, who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! 
A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! 
A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! " 



30 THE PBINCESS. 

" No plot, no plot/' he answer'd. " Wretched boy, 
How saw you not the inscription on the gate, 
Let no man enter in on pain of death ? " 
" And if I had," he answer'd, " wKo could think 

180 The softer Adams of your Academe, 
O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such 
As chanted on the blanching bones of men ? " 
" But you will find it otherwise " she said. 
" You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow 
Binds me to speak, and that iron will. 
That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, 
The Princess." " Well then, Psyche, take my life, 
And nail me like a weasel on a grange 
For warning : bury me beside the gate, 

190 And cut this epitaph above my bones ; 
ITere lies a brother by a sister slain, 
All for the common good of womankind.^* 
'^ Let me die too," said Cyril, " having seen 
And heard the Lady Psyche." 

I struck in : 
"Albeit so mask'd. Madam, I love the truth ; 
Receive it ; and in me behold the Prince 
Your countryman, affianced years ago 
To the Lady Ida : here, for here she was. 
And thus (what other way was left) I came." 

200 " Sir, Prince, I have no country j none j 



PART II. 31 

If any, this ; but none. Whate'er I was 

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 

Affianced, Sir ? love-whispers may not breathe 

Within this vestal limit, and how should I, 

Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt 

Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it falls." 

'' Yet pause," I said : " for that inscription there, 

I think no more of deadly lurks therein. 

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth. 

To scare the fowl from fruit : if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows ? war ; 

Your own work marr'd : for this your Academe, 

"Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo 

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 

With all fair theories only made to gild 

A stormless summer." " Let the Princess judge 

Of that," she said : '^ farewell. Sir — and to you. 

I shudder at the sequel, but I go." 

"Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoin'd, 
" The fifth in line from that old Florian, 220 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall 
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow 
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 
As he bestrode my G-randsire, when he fell, 
And all else fled ? we point to it, and we say, 



32 THE PRINCESS. 

The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, 
But branches current yet in kindred veins." 
"Are you that Psyche/' Florian added ; " she 
With whom I sang about the morning hills, 

230 Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, 
And snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you 
That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow. 
To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught 
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 
My sickness down to happy dreams ? are you 
That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 
You were that Psyche, but what are you now ? " 
" You are that Psyche," Cyril said, " for whom 
I would be that for ever which I seem, 

240 Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, 
And glean your scatter'd sapience." 

Then once more, 
"Are you that Lady Psyche/' I began, 
" That on her bridal morn before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties 
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 
That were there any of our people there 
In want or peril, there was one to hear 
And help them ? look ! for such are these and I." 

250 <'Are you that Psyche," Florian ask'd, " to whom, 



PART II. 33 

In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn 

Came flying while you sat beside the well ? 

The creature laid his muzzle on your lap, 

And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood 

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. 

That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 

by the bright head of my little niece. 

You were that Psyche, and what are you now ? " 

<' You are that Psyche," Cyril said again, 

" The mother of the sweetest little maid, 26o 

That ever crow'd for kisses." 

" Out upon it ! " 
She answer'd, " peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? 
Him you call great : he for the common weal. 
The fading politics of mortal Kome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were, 
Slew both his sons : and I, shall I, on whom 
The secular emancipation turns 

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save 270 

A prince, a brother ? a little will I yield. 
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 
O hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 
My conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet — 
Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 



34 THE PRINCESS. 

You perish) as you came, to slip away 

To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be said, 

These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 

They fled, who might have shamed us : promise, all." 

280 What could we else, we promised each ; and she. 
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced 
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused 
By Florian ; holding out her lily arms 
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : 
" I knew you at the first : tho' you have grown 
You scarce have alter' d : I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. I give thee to death 
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 

290 Our mother, is she well ? " 

With that she kiss'd 
His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up 
From out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth. 
And far allusion, till the gracious dews 
Began to glisten and to fall : and while 
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, 
" I brought a message here from Lady Blanche." 
Back started she, and turning round we saw 



PART II. 35 

The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, 300 

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, 

A rosy blonde, and in a college gown, 

That clad her like an April daffodilly 

(Her mother's color) with her lips apart. 

And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, 

As bottom agates seen to wave and float 

In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche, "Ah — Melissa — you ! 
You heard us ? " and Melissa, " pardon me 310 

I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast. 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death." 
" I trust you," said the other, " for we two 
Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : 
But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 
The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear 

This whole foundation ruin, and I lose 320 

My honor, these their lives." "Ah, fear me not" 
Replied Melissa ; "no — I would not tell, 
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness. 
No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things 



36 THE PRINCESS. 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon." 
" Be it so " the other, " that we still may lead 
The new light up, and culminate in peace, 
For Solomon may come to Sheba yet." 
Said Cyril, " Madam, he the wisest man 

330 Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 
Of Lebanonian cedar ; nor should you 
(Tho', Madam, you should answer, v:e would ask) 
Less welcome find among us, if you came 
Among us, debtors for our lives to you. 
Myself for something more." He said not what. 
But " Thanks," she answer'd " Go : we have been too 

long 
Together : keep your hoods about the face ; 
They do so that affect abstraction here. 
Speak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 

340 Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be well." 

We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child. 
And held her round the knees against his waist. 
And blew the swoll'n cheek of a trumpeter. 
While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child 
Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh'd ; 
And thus our conference closed. 

And then we strolPd 
For half the day thro' stately theatres 



PART II. 37 

Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard 

The grave Professor. On the lecture slate 

The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration : follow'd then 

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment. 

With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out 

By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies 

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long 

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time 

Sparkle for ever : then we dipt in all 

That treats of whatsoever is, the state. 

The total chronicles of man, the mind. 

The morals, something of the frame, the rock, seo 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower. 

Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, 

And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 

'i'ill like three horses that have broken fence. 

And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn. 

We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 

"Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." 

" They hunt old trails " said Cyril " very well ; 

But when did woman ever yet invent ? " 

" Ungracious ! " answer'd Florian ; " have you learnt 370 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? " 

" trash " he said, " but with a kernel in it. 



38 THE PRINCESS. 

Should I not call her wise, who made me wise ? 
And learnt ? I learnt more from her in a flash, 
Than if my brainpan were an empty hull, 
And every Muse tumbled a science in. 
A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls. 
And round these halls a thousand baby loves 

380 Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 
Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but 
With me. Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy. 
The Head of all the golden-shafted firm, 
The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too ; 
He cleft me thro' the stomacher ; and now 
What think you of it, Florian ? do I chase 
The substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? 
I have no sorcerer's malison on me, 
No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I 

390 Flatter myself that always everywhere 
I know the substance when I see it. Well, 
Are castles shadows ? Three of them ? Is she 
The sweet proprietress a shadow ? If not. 
Shall those three castles patch my tatter' d coat ? 
For dear are those three castles to my wants, 
And dear is sister Psyche to my heart. 
And two dear things are one of double worth. 
And much I might have said, but that my zone 
Unmann'd me : then the Doctors ! to hear 



PART II. 39 

The Doctors ! to watch the thirsty plants 400 

Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar, 

To break my chain, to shake my mane : but thou, 

Modulate me. Soul of mincing mimicry ! 

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 

A'base those eyes that ever loved to meet 

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows ; 

Abate the stride which speaks of man, and loose 

A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek. 

Where they like swallows coming out of time 

Will wonder why they came : but hark the bell 4io 

For dinner, let us go ! " 

And in we stream'd 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair 
In colors gayer than the morning mist, 
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers. 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams, 
The second-sight of some Astraean age, 420 

Sat compass'd with professors : they, the while, 
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro : 
A clamor thicken'd, mixt with inmost terms 
Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone 



40 THE PRINCESS. 

Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments, 
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown, 
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 
In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens : there 

430 One walk'd reciting by herself, and one 
In this hand held a volume as to read, 
And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that : 
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by. 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 
Hung, shadow'd from the heat : some hid and sought 
In the orange thickets : others tost a ball 
Above the fountain-jets, and back again 
With laughter : others lay about the lawns, 
Of the older sort, and murmur' d that their May 

440 Was passing : what was learning unto them ? 
They wish'd to marry ; they could rule a house ; 
Men hated learned women : but we three 
Sat muffled like the Fates ; and often came 
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts 
Of gentle satire, kin to charity. 

That harm' d not : then day droopt; the chapel bells 
Call'd us : we left the walks ; we mixt with those 
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, 
Before two streams of light from wall to wall. 



PART II. 41 

While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 450 

Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court 

A long melodious thunder to the sound 

Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies, 

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 

A blessing on her labors for the world. 



42 THE PRINCESS, 



III. 



Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow. 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go, 
Come from the dying moon, and blow. 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 
Father will come to thee soon ; 

Rest, rest, on mother''s breast. 
Father will come to thee soon ; 

Father will come to his babe in the nest, 

Silver sails all out of the west 
Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 



PAET III. 43 

Morn in the white wake of the morning star 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 
We rose, and each by other drest with care 
Descended to the court that lay three parts 
In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch' d 
Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd 
Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd 
Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, 
Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes lo 

The circled Iris of a night of tears ; 
" And fly," she cried, " fly, while yet you may ! 
My mother knows : " and when I asked her " how," 
" My fault" she wept "my fault ! and yet not mine ; 
Yet mine in part. hear me, pardon me. 
My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night 
To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. 
She says the Princess should have been the Head, 
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 
And so it was agreed when first they came ; '20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now. 
And she the left, or not or seldom used ; 
Hers more than half the students, all the love. 
And so last night she fell to canvass you : 
He)' countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 



44 THE PRINCESS. 

' Who ever saw such wild barbarians ? 

Girls ? — more like men ! ' and at these words the 

snake, 
My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast ; 
And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek 

30 Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 
To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : 
' marvellously modest maiden, you ! 
Men ! girls, like men ! why, if they had been men 
You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 
For wholesale comment.' Pardon, I am shamed 
That I must needs repeat for my excuse 
What looks so little graceful: 'men' (for still 
My mother went revolving on the word) 
' And so they are, — very like men indeed — 

40 And with that woman closeted for hours ! ' 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 

' Why — these — are — men : ' I shudder'd : ' and you 

know it.' 
' ask me nothing,' I said : ' And she knows too, 
And she conceals it.' So my mother clutch'd 
The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 
And now thus early risen she goes to inform 
The Princess : Lady Psyche will be crush'd ; 
But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly : 
But heal me with your pardon ere you go." 



PART III. 45 

"What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush ? " 50 

Said Cyril : " Pale one, blush again : than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away. 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven " 
He added, "lest some classic Angel speak 
In scorn of us, ' They mounted, Ganymedes, 
To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn.' 
But I will melt this marble into wax 
To yield us farther furlough : " and he went. 

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. " Tell us," Florian ask'd, eo 
" How grew this feud betwixt the right and left." 
" long ago," she said, " betwixt these two 
Division smoulders hidden ; 'tis my mother. 
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 
Pent in a crevice : much I bear with her : 
I never knew my father, but she says 
( God help her ! ) she was wedded to a fool ; 
And still she rail'd against the state of things. 
She had the care of Lady Ida's youth. 
And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 7o 

But when your sister came she won the heart 
Of Ida : they were still together, grew 
(For so they said themselves) inoscidated; 
Consonant chords that shiver to one note ; 



46 THE PRINCESS. 

One mind in all things : yet my mother still 
Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, 
And angled with them for her pupil's love : 
She calls her plagiarist ; I know not what : 
But I must go : I dare not tarry," and light, 
80 As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. 

Then murmur'd Florian gazing after her, 
"An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she : how pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again. 
As if to close with Cyril's random wish : 
Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride, 
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow." 

" The crane," I said, " may chatter of the crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I 
90 An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere. 

My princess, my princess ! true she errs, 

But in her own grand way : being herself 

Three times more noble than three score of men, 

She sees herself in every woman else, 

And so she wears her error like a crown 

To blind the truth and me : for her, and her, 

Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix 

The nectar; but — ah she — whene'er she moves 



PART III. 47 

The Samian Here rises and she speaks 

A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.'' loo 

So saying from the court we paced, and gain'd 
The terrace ranged along the Northern front, 
And leaning there on those balusters, high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath. 
And sated with the innumerable rose. 
Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came 
Cyril, and yawning " hard task," he cried ; 
" No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. no 

Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump 
A league of street in summer solstice down. 
Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 
I knock' d and, bidden, enter' d ; found her there 
At point to move, and settled in her eyes 
The green malignant light of coming storm. 
Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd. 
As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 
Concealment : she demanded who we were. 
And why we came ? I fabled nothing fair, 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 
Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. 
But when I dwelt upon your old affiance, 



48 THE PRINCESS. 

She answer'd sharply that I talk'd astray. 

I urged the fierce inscription on the gate, 

And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves 

With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. ' Not more than now,' she said, 

130 ' So puddled as it is with favoritism.' 

I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall 

Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew : 

Her answer was ^ Leave me to deal with that.' 

I spoke of war to come and many deaths. 

And she replied, her duty was to speak. 

And duty duty, clear of consequences. 

I grew discouraged. Sir ; but since I knew 

No rock so hard but that a little wave 

May beat admission in a thousand years, 

140 I recommenced ; ' Decide not ere you pause. 
I find you here but in the second place. 
Some say the third — the authentic foundress you. 
I offer boldly : we will seat you highest : 
Wink at our advent ; help my prince to gain 
His rightful bride, and here I promise you 
Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 
The head and heart of all our fair she-world, 
And your great name flow on with broadening time 
For ever.' Well, she balanced this a little, 



PART III. 49 

And told me she would answer us to-day, i50 

Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more I gain'd." 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 
" That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip of certain strata to the North. 
Would we go with her ? we should find the land 
Worth seeing ; and the river made a fall 
Out yonder : " then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all leo 

Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 
Then summon'd to the porch we went. She stood 
Among her maidens, higher by the head. 
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he roll'd 
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near ; 
I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came 
Upon me, the weird vision of our house : 
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show. 
Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens empty masks, 
And I myself the shadow of a dream. 
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 



50 THE PRINCESS. 

My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes 
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so 
Went forth in long retinue following up 
180 The river as it narrow'd to the hills. 

I rode beside her and to me she said : 
" friend, we trust that you esteem'd us not 
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn ; 
Unwillingly we spake." "No — not to her,'- 
I answer'd, •' but to one of whom we spake 
Your Highness might have seem'd the thing you say." 
"Again ? " she cried, " are you ambassadresses 
From him to me ? we give you, being strange, 
A license : speak, and let the topic die." 

190 I stammer'd that I knew him — could have wish'd — 
" Our king expects — was there no precontract ? 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigured, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south but long'd 
To follow : surely, if your Highness keep 
Your purport, you will shock him even to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair." 



PART III. 51 

" Poor boy/' she said, " can lie not read — no books ? 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games ? nor deals in that 
Which men delight in, martial exercise ? 200 

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl ; 
As girls were once, as we ourself have been : 
We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them : 
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, 
Being other — since we learnt our meaning here, 
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man." 

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile 
" And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, 210 

At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee, 

Vashti, noble Yashti ! Summon' d out 
She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms." 

" Alas, 3^our Highness breathes full East," I said, 
" On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 

1 prize his truth : and then how vast a work 
To assail this gray preeminence of man ! 

You grant me license ; might I use it ? think ; 

Ere half be done perchance your life may fail ; 220 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, 



52 THE PRINCESS. 

And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains 
May only make that footprint upon sand 
Which old-recurring waves of prejudice 
Resmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, 
With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds 
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, 
Love, children, happiness ? " 

And she exclaim'd, 

230 " Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! 
What ! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice ? 
You are bold indeed : we are not talk'd to thus : 
Yet will we say for children, would they grew 
Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : 
But children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die ; 
They with the sun and moon renew their light 
For ever, blessing those that look on them. 

240 Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves — 
— children — there is nothing upon earth 
More miserable than she that has a son 
And sees him err : nor would we work for fame ; 
Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 
Who learns the one pou sto whence after-hands 



PART III. 53 

May move the world, tho' she herself effect 

But little : wherefore up and act, nor shrink 

For fear our solid aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

Of giants living, each, a thousand years. 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone." 

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself 
If that strange Poet-princess with her grand 
Imaginations might at all be won. 
And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : 

" No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are used to that : for women, up till this 260 

Cramp' d under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, 
Dwarfs of the gynaeceum, fail so far 
In high desire, they know not, cannot guess 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If we could give them surer, quicker proof — 
Oh if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches, than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death. 
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes, 
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties," 



54 THE PRINCESS. 

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breath of thunder. O'er it shook the woods, 
And danced the color, and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd 
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 
" As these rude bones to us, are we to her 

280 That will be." ^^Dare we dream of that," I ask'd, 
"Which wrought us, as the workman and his work. 
That practice betters ? " " How," she cried, " you love 
The metaphysics ! read and earn our prize, 
A golden brooch : beneath an emerald plane 
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died 
Of hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; 
She rapt upon her subject, he on her : 
For there are schools for all." " And yet " I said, 
" Methinks I have not found among them all 

290 One anatomic." " Nay, we thought of that," 
She answer'd, " but it pleased us not : in truth 
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound. 
And cram him with the fragments of the grave. 
Or in the dark dissolving human heart. 
And holy secrets of this microcosm, 
Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 



PART III. 55 

Encarnalize their spirits : yet we know 

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs : 

Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, soo 

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, 

For many weary moons before we came, 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

Would tend upon you. To your question now, 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 

Let there be light and there was light : 'tis so : 

For was, and is, and will be, are but is ; 

And all creation is one act at once. 

The birth of light : but we that are not all. 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 3io 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought and make 

One act a phantom of succession : thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow. Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mould 

The woman to the fuller day." 

She spake 
With kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond. 
And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came 
On flowery levels underneath the crag, 
Full of all beauty. " how sweet " I said 
(For I was half -oblivious of my mask) 320 

"To linger here with one that loved us." "Yea," 
She answer'd, " or with fair philosophies 



56 THE PBINCESS. 

That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns, 
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw 
The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers 
Built to the Sun : " then, turning to her maids, 
" Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 
Lay out the viands." At the word, they raised 

330 A tent of satin, elaborately wrought 

With fair Corinna's triumph ; here she stood. 
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek. 
The woman-conqueror ; woman conquer'd there 
The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns. 
And all the men mourn'd at his side : but we 
Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 
With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 
With mine affianced. Many a little hand 
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 

340 Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 

In the dark crag : and then we turn- d, we wound 
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, 
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff. 
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun 
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 



PART IV. 57 



IV. 



The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear. 

And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 



58 THE PRINCESS. 

" There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, 
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound " 
Said Ida " let us down and rest " ; and we 
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, 
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, 
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below 
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent 
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me, 
Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand, 
10 And blissful palpitations in the blood 
Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipt 
Beneath the satin dome and enter' d in. 
There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank 
Our elbows ; on a tripod in the midst 
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. 

Then she, " Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move 
The minutes fledged with music : " and a maid, 
20 Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 

*' Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 



PART IV. 59 

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

" Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 30 

"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

" Dear as remembered kisses after death. 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more." 40 

She ended with such passion that the tear, 
She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl 
Lost in her bosom : but with some disdain 
Answer'd the Princess, " If indeed there haunt 
About the moulder' d lodges of the Past 
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men. 
Well needs it we should crani our ears with wool 



60 THE PRINCESS. 

And so pace by : but thine are fancies hatch'd 
In silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 

50 Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice. 
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste 
Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time 
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights, 
Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 
Found golden : let the past be past : let be 
Their cancell'd Babels : tho' the rough kex break 

60 The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown goat 
Hang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split 
Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear 
A trumpet in the distance pealing news 
Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 
Above the unrisen morrow : " then to me 
" Know you no song of your own land," she said, 
"Kot such as moans about the retrospect. 
But deals with the other distance and the hues 
Of promise ; not a death's-head at the wine ? " 

70 Then I remember'd one myself had made. 

What time I watch'd the swallow winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 



PART IV. 61 

Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far 
As [ could ape their treble, did I sing. 

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. 

"O tell her. Swallow, thou that knowest each, 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
And dark and true and tender is the North. 80 

" O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 

"O were I thou that she might take me in. 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

"Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green ? 

" O tell her. Swallow, that thy brood is flown: 90 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

" O tell her, brief is life but love is long. 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 



62 THE PRINCESS. 

" O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, 
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine. 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.'' 

I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each, 
100 Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time. 

Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips, 
And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 
Eang false : but smiling " Not for thee," she said, 
" Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan 
Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather, maid. 
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake 
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass : and this 
A mere love-poem ! for such, my friend. 
We hold them slight : they mind us of the time 
110 When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, 
That lute and flute fantastic tenderness. 
And dress the victim to the offering up. 
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 
And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 
Poor soul ! I had a maid of honor once ; 
She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 
A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 
I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. 
So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song 
120 Used to great ends : ourseif have often tried 



PART IV. 63 

Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dash'd 

The passion of the prophetess ; for song 

Is duer unto freedom, force and growth 

Of spirit than to junketing and love. 

Love is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this 

Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats, 

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth, 

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered 

Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! i3o 

But now to leaven play with profit, you. 

Know you no song, the true growth of your soil, 

That gives the manners of your country-women ? " 

She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes 
Of shining expectation fixt on mine. 
Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth'd glass had wrought, 
Or master'd by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch 
Of Moll and Meg, and vStrange experiences i40 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 
I frowning ; Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook ; 
The lilylike Melissa droop'd her brows ; 
" Forbear," the Princess cried ; " Forbear, Sir " I ; 
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, 



64 THE PRINCESS. 

I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd : 
Melissa clamor'd " Flee the death ; " " To horse " 
Said Ida ; " home ! to horse ! " and fled, as flies 

150 A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 
When some one batters at the dovecote doors, 
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart. 
In the pavilion : there like parting hopes 
I heard them passing from me : hoof by hoof, 
And every hoof a knell to my desires, 
Clang'd on the bridge; and then another shriek, 
''The Head, the Head, the Princess, the Head! " 
For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roll'd 

160 In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom: 

There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch 

Eapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave, 

No more ; but woman-vested as I was 

Plunged ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her ; then 

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 

The weight of all the hopes of half the world. 

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 

Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd 

To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 

170 Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught. 
And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore. 



PART IV. 65 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly group'd 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 
My burthen from mine arms; they cried "she lives:" 
They bore her back into the tent : but I, 
So much a kind of shame within me wrought, 
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes, 
Nor found my friends ; but push'd alone on foot 
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 
Across the woods, and less from Indian craft iso 

Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length 
The garden portals. Two great statues. Art 
And Science, Caryatids, lifted up 
A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves 
Of open-work in which the hunter rued 
His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows 
Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 
Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. 

A little space was left between the horns. 
Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain, 190 

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, 
And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, 
Now poring on the glowworm, now the star, 
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheel'd 
Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. 

A step 



66 THE PRINCESS. 

Of lightest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom, 
Disturb'd me with the doubt " if this were she," 
But it was Florian. " Hist hist," he said, 

200 '' They seek us : out so late is out of rules. 
Moreover ' seize the strangers ' is the cry. 
How came you here ? " I told him : '^ I " said he, 
" Last of the train, a moral leper, I, 
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd. 
Arriving all confused among the rest 
With hooded brows I crept into the hall. 
And, couch'd behind a Judith, underneath 
The head of Holof ernes peep'd and saw. 
Girl after girl was call'd to trial : each 

210 Disclaim'd all knowledge of us : last of all, 
Melissa : trust me, Sir, I pitied her. 
She, question'd if she knew us men, at first 
Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not : 
And then, demanded if her mother knew, 
Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied : 
From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her. 
Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent 
For Psyche, but she was not there ; she call'd 
For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors ; 

220 She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 
And I slipt out : but whither will you now ? 



PART IV. 67 

And where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled : 
What, if together ? that were not so well. 
Would rather we had never come ! I dread 
His wildness, and the chances of the dark." 

" And yet," I said, " you wrong him more than I 
That struck him : this is proper to the clown, 
Tho' smock' d, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown. 
To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 
That which he says he loves : for Cyril, howe'er 230 

He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song 
Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips 
Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold 
These flashes on the surface are not he. 
He has a solid base of temperament : 
But as the water lily starts and slides 
Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 
Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is he." 

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, " Names : " 240 

He, standing still, was clutch' d ; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : 
Before me shower' d the rose in flakes : behind 



68 THE PRINCESS. 

I heard the puff'cl pursuer ; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not, 
And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 
At last I hook'd my ankle in a vine, 
250 That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled us to the Princess where she sat 
High in the hall : above her droop'd a lamp, 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic lire on a mast-head. 
Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each side 
Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair 
Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, 
260 Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 
And labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; 
Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne : and therebeside. 
Half-naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purpled footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left, 
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong, 



PART IV. 69 

Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 

Melissa knelt ; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

" It was not thus, Princess, in old days : 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips : 
I led you then to all the Castalies ; 
I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; 
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me 
Your second mother : those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend : you began to change — 
I saw it and grieved — to slacken and to cool ; 280 

Till taken with her seeming openness 
You turn'd your warmer currents all to her. 
To me you froze : this was my meed for all. 
Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, 
And partly that I hoped to win you back. 
And partly conscious of my own deserts, 
And partly that you were my civil head, 
And chiefly you were born for something great. 
In which I might your fellow-worker be. 
When time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme 290 
Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 
In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd. 
Up in one night and due to sudden sun : 
We took this palace ; but even from the first 



70 THE PRINCESS. 

You stood in your own light and darken' d mine. 

What student came but that you planed her path 

To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 

A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 

I your old friend and tried, she new in all ? 

300 But still her lists were swell'd and mine were lean ; 
Yet I bore up in hope she would be known : 
Then came these wolves : thej/ knew her : thei/ endured. 
Long-closeted with her the yestermorn, 
To tell her what they were, and she to hear : 
And me none told : not less to an eye like mine 
A lidless watcher of the public weal. 
Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot 
Was to you : but I thought again : I fear'd 
To meet a cold ' We thank you, we shall hear of it 

310 From Lady Pysche : " you had gone to her. 
She told, perforce ; and winning easy grace, 
No doubt, for slight delay, remained among us 
In our young nursery still unknown, the stem 
Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat 
Were all miscounted as malignant haste 
To push my rival out of place and power. 
But public use required she should be known ; 
And since my oath was ta'en for public use, 
I broke the letter of it to keep the sense. 

320 I spoke not then at first, but watch'd them well, 



PART IV. 71 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone, 

Eidd'n to the hills, she likewise : now, I thought, 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I : 

Did she ? These monsters blazon'd what they were, 

According to the coarseness of their kind. 

For thus I hear ; and known at last (my work) 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame, 

I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies ; 330 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

I, that have wasted here health, wealth, and time. 

And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast : 

Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan. 

Divorced from my experience, will be chaff 

Por every gust of chance, and men will say 

We did not know the real light, but chased 

The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread." 

She ceased : the Princess answer'd coldly, " Good : 340 
Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. 
For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is changed ; we take it to ourself." 

Thereat the Lady stretch'd a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 



72 THE PRINCESS. 

" The plan was mine. I built the nest " she said 
" To hatch the cuckoo. Eise ! " and stoop'd to updrag 
Melissa : she, half on her mother propt, 
Half-drooping from her, turn'd her face, and cast 

350 A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer. 

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 

A Niobean daughter, one arm out. 

Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 

We gazed upon her came a little stir 

About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd 

Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, 

A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear 

Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face, and wing'd 

Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell 

3G0 Delivering seal'd dispatches which the Head 
Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood 
Tore open, silent we with blind surmise 
Eegarding, while she read, till over brow 
And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 
As of some fire against a stormy cloud. 
When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 
Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 
For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast, 
Beaten with some great passion at her heart, 

370 Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 
In the dead hush the papers that she held 



PART IV. 73 

Rustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; 

The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire ; she crush'd 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her, 

She whirl' d them on to me, as who should say 

" Read," and I read — two letters — one her sire's. 

" Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, 380 

We, conscious of what temper you are built. 
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 
Into his father's hand, who has this night, 
You lying close upon his territory, 
Slipt round and in the dark invested you, 
And here he keeps me hostage for his son." 

The second was my father's running thus : 
" You have our son : touch not a hair of his head : 
Render him up unscathed : give him your hand : 
Cleave to your contract : tho' indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man ; 
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 
Would make all women kick against their Lords 
Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve 
That we this night should pluck your palace down ; 



74 THE PRINCESS. 

And we will do it, unless you send us back 
Our son, on the instant, whole." 

So far I read . 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously. 

'' not to pry and peer on your reserve, 

400 But led by golden wishes, and a hope 
The child of regal compact, did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be : hear me, for I bear, 
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs. 
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life 
Less mine than yours : my nurse would tell me of you ; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon. 
Vague brightness ; when a boy, you stoop'd to me 

410 From all high places, lived in all fair lights. 
Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 
And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; 
The leader wildswan in among the stars 
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light 
The mellow breaker murmur' d Ida. Now, 
Because I would have reach'd you, had you been 
Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned 
Persephone in Hades, now at length, 



PART IV. 75 

Those winters of abeyance all worn out, 420 

A man I came to see you : but, indeed, 
Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, 

noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 
On you, their centre : let me say but this, 
That many a famous man and woman, town 
And landskip, have I heard of, after seen 

The dwarfs of presage : tho' when known, there grew 

Another kind of beauty in detail 

Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 

My boyish dream involved and dazzled down 430 

And master'd, while that after-beauty makes 

Such head from act to act, from hour to hour, 

Within me, that except you slay me here, 

According to your bitter statute-book, 

1 cannot cease to follow you, as they say 
The seal does music ; who desire you more 
Than growing boys their manhood 5 dying lips. 
With many thousand matters left to do. 

The breath of life ; more than poor men wealth, 

Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — but half 440 

Without you ; with you, whole ; and of those halves 

You worthiest ; and howe'er you block and bar 

Your heart with system out from mine, I hold 

That it becomes no man to nurse despair. 

But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms 



76 THE PRINCESS. 

To follow up the worthiest till he die : 
Yet that I came not all unauthorized 
Behold your father's letter." 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd 

450 Unopen'd at her feet : a tide of fierce 
Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, 
As waits a river level with the dam 
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam : 
And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
A hubbub in the court of half the maids 
Gather'd together : from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendor slanted o'er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes. 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, 

460 And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 

Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 

All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light. 

Some crying there was an army in the land, 

And some that men were in the very walls, 

And some they cared not ; till a clamor grew 

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built. 

And worse-confounded : high above them stood 

The placid marble Muses, looking peace. 

Not peace she look'd, the Head : but rising up 
470 Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 



PART IV. 77 

To the open window moved, remaining there 

Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves 

Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 

Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 

Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and 

called 
Across the tumult, and the tumult fell. 

" What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I your Head ? 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks : / dare 
All these male thunderbolts : what is it ye fear ? 
Peace ! there are those to avenge us and they come : 48o 
If not, — myself were like enough, girls, 
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights^ 
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, 
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, 
Die : yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 
Six thousand years of fear have made you that 
From which I would redeem you : but for those 
That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 
Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 
We hold a great convention : then shall they 490 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 
With whom they deal, dismiss' d in shame to live 
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, 
Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, 



78 THE PRINCESS. 

Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, 
The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, 
Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels. 
But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, 
To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour, 
500 For ever slaves at home and fools abroad." 

She, ending, waved her hands : thereat the crowd 
Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile, that look'd 
A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. 
When all the glens are drown'd in azure gloom 
Of thunder-shower, she* floated to us and said: 

" You have done well and like a gentleman. 
And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : 
And you look well too in your woman's dress : 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 
510 You saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : 
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive. 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 
would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 
You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd 



PART IV. 79 

Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 

/ wed with thee ! / bound by precontract 520 

Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold 

That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown, 

And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 

Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : 

I trample on your offers and on you : 

Begone : we will not look upon you more. 

Here, push them out at gates." 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough 
Bent their broad faces toward us and address'd 
Their motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, 530 

But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands. 
The weight of destiny : so from her face 
They push'd us, down the steps, and thro' the court, 
And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. 

We cross'd the street and gain'd a petty mound 
Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard 
The voices murmuring. While I listen'd, came 
On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts ; 
The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, 540 

The jest and earnest working side by side. 
The cataract and the tumult and the kings 



80 THE PRINCESS. 

Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night 
With all its doings had and had not been, 
And all things were and were not. 

This went by 
As strangely as it came, and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; 
Not long ; I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one 
550 To whom the touch of all mischance but came 
As night to him that sitting on a hill 
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise ; then we moved away. 



INTERLUDE. 81 

Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, 

That beat to battle where he stands ; 
Thy face across his fancy comes, 

And gives the battle to his hands : 
A moment, while the trumpets blow, 

He sees his brood about thy knee ; 
The next, like fire he meets the foe, 560 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

So Lilia sang : we thought her half-possess'd, 

She struck such warbling fury thro' the words ; 

And, after, feigning pique at what she call'd 

The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime — 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music — clapt her hands and cried for war, 

Or some grand light to kill and make an end : 

And he that next inherited the tale, 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 570 

" Sir Ralph has got your colors ; if I prove 

Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? " 

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb 

Lay by her like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. " Fight " she said, 

" And make us all we would be, great and good.'' 

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol borrow'd from the hall, 

Arranged the favor, and assumed the Prince. 



82 THE PRINCESS. 



Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound. 
We stumbled on a stationary voice, 
And " Stand, who goes ? " "Two from the palace " I. 
" The second two : they wait," he said, '' pass on ; 
His Highness wakes : " and one, that clash'd in arms, 
By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led 
Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 
The drowsy folds of out great ensign shake 
From blazon'd lions o'er the imperial tent 
Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light 
Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seem'd to hear, 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies. 
Each hissing in his neighbor's ear ; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 
On all sides, clamoring etiquette to death, 
Unmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down. 
The fresh young captains flash'd their glittering teeth, 
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew. 
And slain with laughter roll'd the gilded Squire. 

At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears, 
Panted from weary sides " King, you are free ! 



PART V. 83 

We did but keep you surety for our son, 

If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge : " 

For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn with briers, 

More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath. 

And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. 

Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm so 

A whisper'd jest to some one near him, "Look, 

He has been among his shadows." " Satan take 

The old women and their shadows ! ( thus the King 

Koar'd ) make yourself a man to figlit with men. 

Go: Cyril told us all." 

As boys that slink 
From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, 
Away we stole, and transient in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough 
To sheathing splendors and the golden scale 
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us. 
A little shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given 
For stroke and song, resolder'd peace, whereon 
Follow'd his tale. Amazed he fled away 
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping : " then we fell 



84 THE PRINCESS, 

Into your father's hand, and there she lies, 
50 But will not speak, nor stir." 

He show'd a tent 
A stone-shot off: we enter'd in, and there 
Among piled arms and rough accoutrements, 
Pitiful sight, wrapp'd in a soldier's cloak, 
Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, 
And push'd by rude hands from its pedestal, 
All lier fair length upon the ground she lay : 
And at her head a follower of the camj), 
A charr'd and wrinkled piece of womanhood, 
»Sat watching like a watcher ])y the dead. 

60 Then Florian knelt, and " Come " he whisper'd to 
her, 
" Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. 
What have you done but right ? you could not slay 
Me, nor your prince : look up : be comforted : 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought. 
When fall'n in darker ways." And likewise I : 
" Be comforted : have I not lost her too, 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me ? " She heard, she moved. 
She moan'd, a folded voice ; and up she sat, 

70 And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 
As those that mourn half-shrouded over death 



PART V. 85 

In deathless marble. ^' Her," she said, ^' my friend — 
Parted from her — betray 'd her cause and mine — 
Where shall I breathe ? why kept ye not your faith ? 
base and bad ! what comfort ? none for me ! " 
To whom remorseful Cyril, " Yet I pray 
Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! " 
At which she lifted up her voice and cried. 

" Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child. 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! so 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back; 
And either she will die from want of care. 
Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say 
The child is hers — for every little fault. 
The child is hers ; and they will beat my girl 
Remembering her mother : my flower ! 
Or they will take her, they will make. her hard, 
And she will pass me by in after-life 
With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 
Ill mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made, 
The horror of the shame among them all : 
But I will go and sit beside the doors. 
And make a wild petition night and day, 
Until they hate to hear me like a wind 
Wailing for ever, till they open to me, 



86 THE PRINCESS. 

And lay my little blossom at my feet, 
My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child : 
And I will take her up and go my way, 

100 And satisfy my soul with kissing her : 

Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me 
Who gave me back my child ? " " Be comforted," 
Said Cyril, " you shall have it ; " but again 
She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so 
Like tender things that being caught feign death, 
Spoke not, nor stirr'd. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro' all the camp and inward raced the scouts 
With rumor of Prince Arac hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without 

no Found the gray kings at parle : and " Look you " cried 
My father " that our compact be fulfill'd : 
You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man : 
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; 
She yields, or war." 

Then Gama turn'd to me : 
" We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl ; and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : 
How say you, war or not ? " 

" Not war, if possible, 



PART V. 87 

king," I said, " lest from the abuse of war, 120 
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year, 

The smouldering homestead, and the household flower 

Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — 

A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 

Three times a monster : now she lightens scorn 

At him that mars her plan, but then would hate 

(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it, 

And every face she look'd on justify it) 

The general foe. More soluble is this knot, 

By gentleness than war. I want her love. 130 

What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd 

Your cities into shards with catapults. 

She would not love ; — or brought her chain'd, a slave, 

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, 

Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn 

The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs, 

And crush'd to death : and rather, Sire, than this 

1 would the old God of war himself were dead, 
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 
Rotting on some wild shore witJti ribs of wreck, 

Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice, 
Not to be molten out." 

And roughly spake 
My father, " Tut, you know them not, the girls. 



88 THE PRINCESS. 

Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think 
That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir ! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game : 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase. 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 

150 They love us for it, and we ride them down. 

Wheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! 
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them 
As he that does the thing they dare not do, 
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 
Among the women, snares them by the score 
riatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho' dash'd with death 
He reddens what he kisses : thus I won 
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife, 

160 Worth winning ; but this firebrand — gentleness 
To such as her ! if Cyril spake her true. 
To catch a dragon in a cherry net, 
To trip a tigress with a gossamer. 
Were wisdom to it." 

" Yea but Sire," I cried, 
" Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier ? No : 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 
The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes, 
Stood for her cause^ and flung defiance down 



PART V. 89 

Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the death, no 

No, not the soldier's ; yet I hold her, king, 

True woman : but you clash them all in one. 

That have as many differences as we. 

The violet varies from the lily as far 

As oak from elm : one loves the soldier, one 

The silken priest of peace, one this, one that. 

And some unworthily ; their sinless faith, 

A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty. 

Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 

More breadth of culture : is not Ida right ? iso 

They worth it ? truer to the law within ? 

Severer in the logic of a life ? 

Twice as magnetic to sweet influences 

Of earth and heaven ? and she of whom you speak. 

My mother, looks as whole as some serene 

Creation minted in the golden moods 

Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch, 

But pure as lines of green that streak the white 

Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves ; I say, 

Not like the piebald miscellan}^, man, i90 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire. 

But whole and one : and take them all-in-all. 

Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind. 

As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 

Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs 



90 THE PRINCESS. 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war ; 
Lest I lose all." 

" Nay, nay, you spake but sense " 
Said Gama. " We remember love ourself 
In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then 

200 This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. 
You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; 
And there is something in it as you say: 
But you talk kindlier : we esteem you for it. — 
He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, 
I would he had our daughter : for the rest, 
Our own detention, why, the causes weigh'd, 
Fatherly fears — you used us courteously — 
We would do much to gratify your Prince — 
We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 

210 Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 
You did but come as goblins in the night, 
Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head. 
Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the milking-maid, 
Nor robb'd the farmer of his bowl of cream : 
But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, 
He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines. 
And speak with Arac : Arac's word is thrice 
As ours with Ida : something may be done — 
I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. 

220 You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 



PART V. 91 

Follow us : who knows ? we four may build some plan 
Foursquare to opposition." 

Here he reach' d 
White hands of farewell to my sire, who growl'd 
An answer which, half-muffled in his beard, 
Let so much out as gave us leave to go. 

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns 
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring 
In every bole, a song on every spray 
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke 
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love 230 

In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed 
All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode 
And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews 
Gather'd by night and peace, with each light air 
On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts than Peace 
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares. 
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers 
With clamor : for among them rose a cry 
As if to greet the king ; they made a halt ; 
The horses yell'd ; they clash'd their arms ; the drum 240 
Beat ; merrily-blowing shrill'd the martial fife ; 
And in the blast and bray of the long horn 
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated 
The banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced 



92 THE PRINCESS. 

Three captains out ; nor ever had I seen 
Such thews of men : the midmost and the highest 
Was Arac : all about his motion clung 
The shadow of his sister, as the beam 
Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance 
250 Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone. 
That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark ; 
And as the fiery Sirius alters hue. 
And bickers into red and emerald, shone 
Their morions, wash'd with morning, as they came. 

And I that prated peace, when first I heard 
War-music, felt the blind wild-beast of force. 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man. 
Stir in me as to strike : then took the king 
His three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand 
260 And now a pointed finger, told them all : 
A common light of smiles at our disguise 
Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest 
Had labor'd down within his ample lungs, 
The genial giant, Arac, rolPd himself 
Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. 

" Our land invaded, 'sdeath ! and he himself 
Your captive, yet my father wills not war : 
And, 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no ? 



PART V. 93 



But then this question of your troth remains : 

And there's a downright honest meaning in her ; 

She ilies too high, she flies too high ! and yet 

Slie ask'd but space and fair-play for her scheme ; 

She prest and prest it on me — I myself, 

What know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! 

I thought her half -right talking of her wrongs ; 

I say she flies too high, 'sdeath ! what of that ? 

I take her for the flower of womankind, 

And so I often told her, right or wrong, 

And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, 

And, right or wrong, I care not : this is all, 

I stand upon her side : she made me swear it — 

'Sdeath! — and with solemn rites by candle-light - 

Swear by St. something — I forget her name — 

Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men ; 

She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 

Come, this is all ; she will not : waive your claim : 

If not, the foughten field, what else, at once 

Decides it, 'sdeath ! against my father's will.^' 

I lagg'd in answer loth to render up 
My precontract, and loth by brainless war 
To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till bne of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair about his lip, 



270 



94 THE PRINCESS. 

To prick us on to combat " Like to like ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart." 
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow ! 
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter- scoff, 
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 
300 " Decide it here : why not ? we are three to three." 

Then spake the third " But three to three ? no more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 
More, more, for honor : every captain waits 
Hungry for honor, angry for his king. 
More, more, some fifty on a side, that each 
May breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow 
Of these or those, the question settled die." 

" Yea," answer'd I, " for this wild wreath of air, 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 
310 Foam of men's deeds — this honor, if ye will. 
It needs must be for honor if at all : 
Since, what decision ? if we fail, we fail. 
And if we win, we fail : she would not keep 
Her compact." "'Sdeath! but we will send to her," 
Said Arac, " worthy reasons why she should 
Bide by this issue : let our missive thro,' 
And you shall have her answer by the word." 



PART V. 95 

" Boys ! " shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a hen 
To her false daughters in the pool ; for none 
Regarded ; neither seem'd there more to say : 320 

Back rode we to my father's camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates, 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim, 
Or by denial flush her babbling wells 
With her own people's life : three times he went : 
The first, he blew and blew, but none appear'd : 
He batter'd at the doors ; none came : the next. 
An awful voice within had warn'd him thence : 
The third, and those eight daughters of the plough 
Came sallying thro' the gates, and caught his hair, 330 
And so belabor'd him on rib and cheek 
They made him wild : not less one glance he caught 
Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there 
Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 
Tho' compass'd by two armies and the noise 
Of arms ; and standing like a stately Pine 
Set in a cataract on an island-crag, 
When storm is on the heights, and right and left 
Suck'd from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
The torrents, dash'd to the vale : and yet her will 340 

Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. 

But when I told the king that I was pledged 
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clash'd 



96 THE PRINCESS. 

His iron palms together with a cry ; 
Himself would tilt it out among the lads : 
But overborne by all his bearded lords 
With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce 
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur : 
And many a bold knight started up in heat, 
350 And sware to combat for my claim till death. 

All on this side the palace ran the field 
Flat to the garden-wall ; and likewise here. 
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, 
A column'd entry shone and marble stairs, 
And great bronze valves, emboss'd with Tomyris 
And what she did to Cyrus after fight. 
But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat 
All that long morn the lists were hammer'd up. 
And all that morn the heralds to and fro, 
360 With message and defiance, went and came ; 
Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand. 
But shaken here and there, and rolling words 
Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read. 

"0 brother, you have known the pangs we felt, 
What heats of indignation when we heard 
Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's feet ; 
Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride 



PART V. 97 

Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; 

Of living hearts that crack within the fire 

Where smoulder their dead despots ; and of those, — 370 

Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling 

Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 

The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 

Made for all noble motion : and I saw 

That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 

With smoother men : the old leaven leaven'd all ; 

Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, 

No woman named : therefore I set my face 

Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 

Far off from men I built a fold for them : sso 

I stored it full of rich memorial : 

I fenced it round with gallant institutes, 

And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey 

And prosper'd ; till a rout of saucy boys 

Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace, 

Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know not what 

Of insolence and love, some pretext held 

Of baby troth, invalid, since my will 

Seal'd not the bond — the striplings! — for their 

sport ! — 
I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? 390 

Or you ? or I ? for since you think me touch'd 
In honor — what, I would not aught of false — 



98 THE PRINCESS. 

Is not our cause pure ? and whereas I know 

Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 

You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 

What end soever : fail you will not. Still 

Take not his life : he risk'd it for my own ; 

His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er you do, 

Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. dear 

400 Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you 
The sole men to be mingled with our cause, 
The sole men we shall prize in the after-time, 
Your very armor hallow' d, and your statues 
Rear'd, sung to, when, this gad-fly brush'd aside, 
We plant a solid foot into the Time, 
And mould a generation strong to move 
With claim on claim from right to right, till she 
Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself ; 
And Knowledge in our own land make her free, 

410 And, ever following those two crowned twins. 
Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain 
Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 
Between the Northern and the Southern morn." 

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. 
" See that there be no traitors in your camp : 
We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 
Since our arms fail'd — this Egypt-plague of men ! 



PART V. 99 

Almost our maids were better at their homes, 

Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I think 

Our chiefest comfort is the little child 420 

Of one unworthy mother ; which she left : 

She shall not have it back : the child shall grow 

To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 

I took it for an hour in mine own bed 

This morning : there the tender orphan hands 

Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence 

The wrath I nursed against the world : farewell." 

I ceased ; he said, " Stubborn, but she may sit 
Upon a king's right hand in thunder-storms. 
And breed up warriors ! See now, tho' yourself 430 

Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense, the spindling king. 
This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance. 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 
And topples down the scales ; but this is fixt 
As are the roots of earth and base of all ; 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth : 
Man for the sword and for the needle she : 
Man with the head and woman with the heart : 
Man to command and woman to obey ; 440 

All else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare 
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 



100 THE PRINCESS. 

Prom tile to scullery, and her small goodman 
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 
Mix with his hearth : but you — she's yet a colt — 
Take, break her : strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd 
She might not rank with those detestable 
That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 
Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street, 

450 They say she's comely ; there's the fairer chance : 
/ like her none the less for rating at her ! 
Besides, the woman wed is not as we. 
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 
The bearing and the training of a child 
Is woman's wisdom." 

Thus the hard old king : 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon : 
I pored upon her letter which I held, 
And on the little clause " take not his life : " 

460 I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 
And on the -' Follow, follow, thou shalt win : " 
I thought on all the wrathful king had said. 
And how the strange betrothment was to end : 
Then I remember' d that burnt sorcerer's curse 
That one should fight with shadows and should fall ; 
And like a flash the weird affection came : 
King, camp and college turn'd to hollow shows ; 



PABT V. 101 

I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts, 
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts, 
To dream myself the shadow of a dream : 470 

And ere I woke it was the point of noon, 
The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed 
We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there 
Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared 
At the barrier like a wild horn in a land 
Of echoes, and a moment, and once more 
The trumpet, and again : at which the storm 
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 
And riders front to front, until they closed 
In conflict with the crash of shivering points, 48o 

And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream, I dream' d 
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed. 
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance. 
And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 
Part sau Like rocks : part reel'd but kept their seats : 
Part roll'd on the earth and rose again and drew : 
Part stumbled mixt with floimdering horses. Down 
From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 
From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail. 
The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere 490 

He rode the niellay, lord of the ringing lists, 
And all the plain, — brand, mace, and shaft, and 
shield — 



102 THE PRINCESS. 

Shock' d, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd 
With hammers ; till I thought, can this be he 
From Gama's dwarfish loins ? if this be so, 
The mother makes us most — and in my dream 
I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 
Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, 
And highest, among the statues, statuelike, 

600 Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael, 
With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, 
A single band of gold about her hair, 
Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but she 
No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — 
Too hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight. 
Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave 
Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, 
And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream 
All that I would. But that large-moulded man, 

510 His visage all agrin as at a wake, 

Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud. 

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains. 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and 

splits, 
And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 



PART r. 103 

Eeels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 

Gave way before him : only Florian, he 

That loved me closer than his own right eye, 520 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down : 

And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince, 

With Psyche's color round his helmet, tough. 

Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 

But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 

And threw him : last I spurr'd ; I felt my veins 

Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand, 

And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung. 

Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced, 

I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 530 

Flow'd from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. 



104 THE PBINCESS. 



yi. 

Home they brought her warrior dead : 
She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry : 

All her maidens, watching, said, 
" She must weep or she will die/' 

Then they praised him, soft and low, 
Caird him worthy to be loved. 

Truest friend and noblest foe ; 
Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place. 
Lightly to the warrior stept, 

Took the face-cloth from the face ; 
Yet she neither moved nor wept. 

Rose a nurse of ninety years. 
Set his child upon her knee — 

Like summer tempest came her tears 
" Sweet my child, I live for thee." 



PART VL 105 

My dream had never died or lived again. 
As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard : 
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all 
So often that I speak as having seen. 

For so it seem'd, or so they said to me, 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 
That when our side was vanquish'd and my cause 
For ever lost, there went up a great cry, 
The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran lo 

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque 
And groveird on my body, and after him 
Came Ps3^che, sorrowing for Aglaia. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyche's babe in arm : there on the roofs 
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. 

" Our enemies have fall'ii, have ialVn : tlie seed, 
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark, 
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. 

" Our enemies have fall'n, have falPn : they came ; 
The leaves were wet with women's tears : they heard 



106 THE PRINCESS. 

A noise of songs they would not understand : 
They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall, 
And would have strown it, and are falPn themselves. 

" Our enemies have falPn, have falFn : they came. 
The woodmen with their axes : lo the tree ! 
But we will make it faggots for the hearth , 
30 And shape it plank and beam for roof and iloor, 
And boats and bridges for the use of men. 

" Our enemies have fall'n, have falPn : they struck ; 
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew 
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain : 
The glittering axe was broken in their arms, 
Their arms were shatterVl to the shoulder blade. 

" Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow 
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth 
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and roll'd 
40 With music in the growing breeze of Time, 

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 
Shall move the stony bases of the world. 



"And now, maids, behold our sanctuary 
Is violate, our laws broken : fear we not 
To break them more in their behoof, whose arms 
•Champion'd our cause and won it with a day 
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast. 



PART VI. 107 

When dames and heroines of the golden year 

Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, 

To rain an April of ovation round 50 

Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but come. 

We will be liberal, since our rights are won. 

Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 

111 nurses ; but descend, and proffer these 

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there 

Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries 

Of female hands and hospitality." 

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, 
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led 
A hundred maids in train across the Park. eo 

Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came, 
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest : by them went 
The enamor'd air sighing, and on their curls 
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell, 
And over them the tremulous isles of light 
Slided, they moving under shade : but Blanche 
At distance follow'd : so they came : anon 
Thro' open field into the lists they wound 
Timorously ; and as the leader of the herd 
That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, 70 

And follow'd up by a hundred airy does, 
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air. 



108 THE PRINCESS, 

The lovely, lordly creature floated on 
To where her wounded brethren lay ; there stay'd ; 
Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest 
Their hands, and call'd them dear deliverers, 
And happy warriors, and immortal names. 
And said " You shall not lie in the tents but here. 
And nursed by those for whom you fought, and 
served 
80 With female hands and hospitality." 

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance, 
She past my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye. 
Silent ; but when she saw me lying stark, 
Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly pale, 
Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd ; and when she saw 
The haggard father's face and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain 
90 Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past 
A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : 
" He saved my life : my brother slew him for it." 
No more : at which the king in bitter scorn 
Drew from my neck the painting and the tress. 
And held them up : she saw them, and a day 
Rose from the distance on her memory, 



PART VI. 109 

When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress 

With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : 

And then once more she look VI at my pale face : 

Till understanding all the foolish work loo 

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all, 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast ; 

She bow'd, she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feeling linger on my brows, and j^resently 

" Sire," she said, " he lives : he is not dead : 

let me have him with my brethren here 

In our own palace : we will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means, 

To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make no 

Our progress falter to the woman's goal." 

She said : but at the happy word "he lives" 
My father stoop'd, re-father'd o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes above my fall'n life. 
With brow to brow like night and evening mixt 
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole 
A little nearer, till the babe that by us, 
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede. 
Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, 
Uncared for, spied its mother and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 



110 THE PRINCESS. 

Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms 

And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 

Brook'd not, but clamoring out "Mine — mine — not 

yours, 
It is not yours, but mine : give me the child " 
Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the cry : 
So stood the unhappy mother open-mouth'd, 
And turn'd each face her way : wan was her cheek 
With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, 

130 Eed grief and mother's hunger in her eye, 
And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 
The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 
The laces toward her babe ; but she nor cared 
Nor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard, 
Look'd up, and rising slowly from me, stood 
Erect and silent, striking with her glance 
The mother, me, the child ; but he that lay 
Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was, 
Trail'd himself up on one knee : then he drew 

140 Her robe to meet his lips, and down she look'd 
At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it seem'd. 
Or self -involved ; but when slie learnt his face, 
Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose 
Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 
Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand 
. When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said : 



PART VI. Ill 

" fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the Lion's mane ! 
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible 
And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, ino 

We vanquish' d, you the Victor of your will. 
What would you more ? give her the child ! remain 
Orb'd in your isolation : he is dead, 
Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be : 
Win you the hearts of women ; and beware 
Lest, where you seek the common love of these, 
The common hate with the revolving wheel 
Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis 
Break from a darken'd future, crown'd with fire, 
And tread you out for ever : but howsoe'er i<5o 

Fixt in yourself, never in your own arms 
To hold your own, deny not hers to her. 
Give her the child ! if, I say, you keep 
One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved 
The breast that fed or arm that dandled you. 
Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer, 
Give her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it. 
Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours. 
Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault 
The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, i70 

Give me it ; /will give it her." 

He said : 



112 THE PRINCESS. 

At first her eye with slow dilation roll'd 
Dry flame, she listening ; after sank and sank 
And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt 
Full on the child ; she took it : " Pretty bud ! 
Lily of the vale ! half-open'd bell of the woods ! 
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world 
Of traitorous friend and broken system made 
No purple in the distance, mystery, 

180 Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ; 
These men are hard upon us as of old. 
We two must j^art : and yet how fain was I 
To dream thy cause embraced in mine, to think 
I might be something to thee, when I felt 
Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 
In the dead prime : but may thy mother prove 
As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! 
And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 
Gentle as freedom " — here she kiss'd it : then — 

190 " All good go with thee ! take it Sir," and so 
Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, 
Who turn'd half-round to Psyche as she sprang 
To meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks ; 
Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, 
And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close enough. 
And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it. 
And hid her bosom with it ; after that 
Put on more calm and added suppliantly : 



PART VI. 113 

"We two were friends : I go to mine own land 
For ever : find some other : as for me '-'oo 

I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet speak to me, 
Say one soft word and let me part forgiven." 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac. " Ida — 'sdeath ! you blame the man ; 
You wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 
Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! 
I am your warrior ; I and mine have fought 
Youi' battle : kiss her ; take her hand, she weeps : 
'Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see it!" 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground, 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin. 
And moved beyond his custom, Gama said : 

" I've heard that there is iron in the blood, 
And I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? 
Whence drew you this steel temper ? not from me, 
Not from your mother, now a saint with saints. 
She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 
' Our Ida has a heart ' ■ — just ere she died — 
' But see that some one with authority 
Be near her still ' and I — I sought for one — 220 

All people said she had authority — 



114 THE PRINCESS. 

The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; 
No ! tho' your father sues : see liow you stand 
Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights niaim'd, 
I trust that there is no one hurt to death, 
For your wild whim : and was it then for this, 
Was it for this we gave our palace up, 
Where we withdrew from summer heats and state. 
And had our wine and chess beneath the planes, 

230 And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone. 
Ere you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? 
Speak to her I say : is this not she of whom. 
When first she came, all flush'd you said to me, 
Now had you got a friend of j^our own age. 
Now could you share your thought ; now should men 

see 
Two women faster welded in one love 
Than pairs of wedlock ; she you walk'd with, she 
You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in the tower. 
Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth, 

240 And right ascension. Heaven knows what ; and now 
A word, but one, one little kindly word. 
Not one to spare her : out upon you, flint ! 
You love nor her, nor me, nor any : nay, 
You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one ? 
You will not ? well — no heart have you, or such 
As fancies like the vermin in a nut 



PART VI. 115 

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness." 

So said the small king moved beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood nor spoke, drain'd of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro' her limbs a drooping languor wept : 
Her head a little bent ; and on her mouth 
A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon 
In a still water : then brake out my sire, 
Lifting his grim head from my wounds. " you, 
Woman, whom we thought woman even now, 
And were half foolVl to let you tend our son, 
Because he might have wish'd it — but we see 
The accomplice of your madness unforgiven. 
And think that you might mix his draught with death, 260 
When your skies change again : the rougher hand 
Is safer : on to the tents : take up the Prince." 

He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend 
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone 
Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend. 

" Come hither, 
Psyche," she cried out, " embrace me, come, 
Quick while I melt 5 make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour : 



116 THE PRINCESS. 

270 Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! 
Kiss and be friends, like children being chid ! 
/ seem no more : / want forgiveness too : 
I should have had to do with none but maids, 
That have no links with men. Ah false but dear. 
Dear traitor, too much loved, why ? — why ? — Yet 

see. 
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more 
With all forgiveness, all oblivion, 
And trust, not love, you less. 

And now, O sire, 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him, 

280 Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 
This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 
Taunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have 
Free adit ; we will scatter all our maids 
Till happier- times each to her proper hearth : 
What use to keep them here — now? grant my prayer. 
Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king : 
Thaw this male nature to some touch of that 
W^hich kills me with myself, and drags me down 
From my fixt height to mob me up with all 

290 The soft and milky rabble of womankind. 
Poor weakling ev'n as they are." 

Passionate tears 
Follow'd : the king replied not : Cyril said : 



PART VI. 117 

" Your brother, Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 

Of your great head — for he is wounded too — 

That you may tend upon him with the prince." 

"Ay so," said Ida with a bitter smile, 

'' Our laws are broken : let him enter too." 

Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song, 

And had a cousin tumbled on the plain, 

Petition'd too for him. " Ay so," she said, 300 

" I stagger in the stream : I cannot keep 

My heart an eddy from the brawling hour : 

We break our laws with ease, but let it be." 

" Ay, so ? " said Blanche : " Amazed am I to hear 

Your Highness : but your Highness breaks with ease 

The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I. 

I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, 

And block'd them out ; but these men came to woo 

Your Highness — verily I think to win." 

So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye : 310 

But Ida, with a voice, that like a bell 
Toll'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn. 

"Fling our doors wide! all, all, not one, but all, 
Not only he, but by my mother's soul. 
Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe. 



118 THE PRINCESS. 

Shall enter, if he will ! Let our giijls flit, 
Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us. 
The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base 
320 Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too. 
But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. 
We brook no further insult but are gone." 

She turn'd ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was rosed with indignation : but the Prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charm VI 
Her wounded soul with words : nor did mine own 
Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. 

Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and l)are 
Straight to the doors : to them the doors gave way 

330 Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek'd 
The virgin marble under iron heels : 
And on they moved and gain'd the hall, and there 
Rested : but great the crush was, and each base. 
To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd 
111 silken fluctuation and the swarm 
Of female whisperers : at the further end 
Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 
Bow-back'd with fear : but in the centre stood 

340 The common men with rolling eyes j amazed 



PART VI. 119 

They glared upon the women, and aghast 

The women stared at these, all silent, save 

When armor clash'd or jingled, while the day, 

Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 

A flying splendor out of brass and steel 

That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 

Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm, 

Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame, 

And now and then an echo started up. 

And shuddering fled from room to room, and died ^50 

Of fright in far apartments. 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : 
And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due 
To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 
And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 
And chariot, many a maiden passing home 
Till happier times ; but some were left of those seo 

Held sagest, and the great lords out and in. 
From those two hosts that lay beside the walls, 
Walk'd at their will, and everything was changed. 



120 THE PRINCESS. 



VII. 

Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea ; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shi4)e 
With fold to fold, of mountam or of (;ape ; 

But O too fond, when have I answered thee? 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : what answer should I give ? 
I love not hollow cheek nor faded eye : 
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! 

Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seaFd : 
I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
Let the great river take me to the main : 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; 
Ask me no more. 



PART VII. 121 

So was their sanctuary violated, 

So their fair college tiirn'd to hospital ; 

At first with all confusion : by and by 

Sweet order lived again with other laws : 

A kindlier influence reign'd ; and everywhere 

Low voices with the ministering hand 

Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk'd, 

They sang, they read : till she not fair began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble ; and to and fro lo 

With books, with flowers, with Angel ofiices. 

Like creatures native unto gracious act. 

And in their own clear element, they moved. 

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell. 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 
Old studies fail'd ; seldom she spoke : but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field : void was her use, 
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 20 

O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night. 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, 
And suck the blindiug splendor from the sand, 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 



122 THE PRINCESS. 

Expunge the world : so fared she gazing there ; 
So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank 
And waste it seem'd and vain ; till down she came, 
And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

30 And twilight dawn'd ; and morn by morn the lark 
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I 
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : 
And twilight gloom'd ; and broader-grown the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, 
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. 

40 But Psyche tended Florian : with her oft 
Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, l)ut left 
Her child among us, willing she should keep 
Court-favor : here and there the small bright head, 
A light of healing, glanced about the couch. 
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face 
Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain j nor seem'd it strange that soon 



PART ViL 123 

He rose up whole, and those fair charities 50 

Join'd at her side ; nor stranger seemVl tliat hearts 
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all-fragrant into one. 

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd 
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn 
That after that dark night among the fields 
She needs must wed him for her own good name ; 
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored ; 60 

Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd 
To incense the Head once more ; till on a day 
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind 
Seen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung 
A moment, and she heard, at which her face 
A little flush'd, and she past on ; but each 
Assumed from thence a half-consent involved 
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these : Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man. 
Nor did her father cease to press my claim, 
Nor did mine own now reconciled ; nor yet 



124 THE PRINCESS. 

Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat : 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard. 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 

80 " You are not Ida ; " clasp it once again, 
And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not, 
, And call her sweet, as if in irony, 
And call her hard and cold, which seeni'd a truth : 
And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind, 
And often she believed that I should die : 
Till out of long frustration of her care, 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons, 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 
Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd 

90 On flying Time from all their silver tongues — 
And out of memories of her kindlier days. 
And sidelong glances at my father's grief. 
And at the happy lovers heart in heart — 
And out of hauntings of my spoken love. 
And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream, 
And often feeling of the helpless hands, 
And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek — 
From all a closer interest flourish'd up, 



PART VII. 125 

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears loo 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 

But such as gather'd color day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness : it was evening : silent light 
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs ; for on one side arose 
The women uj) in wild revolt, and storm'd 
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd 
The forum, and half-crush' d among the rest no 

A dwarf-like Cato cower'd. On the other side 
Hortensia spoke against the tax ; behind, 
A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat, 
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls., 
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins, 
The tierce triumvirs ; and before them paused 
Hortensia pleading : angry was her face. 

I saw the forms : I knew not where I was : 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the dew 120 

Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape 
And rounder seem'd : I moved ; I sigh'd : a touch 



126 THE PRINCESS. 

Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand : 

Then all for languor and self-pity ran 

Mine down my face, and with what life I had. 

And like a flower that cannot all unfold, 

So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun. 

Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 

Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 

130 " If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream^, 
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself : 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream. 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die." 

I could no more, but lay like one in trance. 
That Iiears his burial talk'd of by his friends, 
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign. 
But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd ; she paused; 
140 She stoop'd ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, 



PART VI T. 127 

And left her woman, lovelier in lier nioocl 

Than in her mould that other, when she came 

From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 

And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she i5o 

Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, 

Naked, a double light in air and wave. 

To meet her Graces, where they deck'd her out 

For worship without end ; nor end of mine, 

Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth, 

Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, 

Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep. 

Deep in the night I woke : she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land : 
There to herself, all in low tones, she read : leo 

" Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; 
Nor waves the c} press in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyr}^ font : 
The tire-fl}^ wakens : waken thou with me. 

" Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

'' Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

'' Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 170 



128 THE PRINCESS. 

*' Now folds the lily all lier sweetness up, 
And slips into the bosom of the lake : 
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me." 

I heard her turn the "page ; she found a small 
Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read : 

" Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height 
What pleasure lives in height (tlie shepherd sang). 
In height and eold, the splendor of the hills ? 

180 But cease to mc^ve so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam b}^ the blasted Pine, 
To sit a star upon tlie sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find liim ; l)y tlie happy threshold, lie. 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 
Or red witli spirted purple of the vats. 
Or foxlike in the vine ; nor cares to walk 
With Death and Morning on the silver horns, 

190 Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine. 
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice. 
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 
But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 
To find him in the valley ; let the wild 
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 



PART VII. 129 

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air : 

So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

Arise to thee ; the children call, and I 

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is SAveet; 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn. 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms. 

And murmuring of innumerable bees.'' 

So she low-toned ; while with shut eyes I lay 
Listening ; then look'd. Pale was the perfect face ; 
The bosom with long sighs labor'd ; and meek 
Seem'd the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes, 
And the voice trembled and the hand. She said 
Brokenly, that she knew it, she had fail'd 
In sweet humility ; had fail'd in all ; 
That all her labor was but as a block 
Left in the quarry ; but she still were loth, 
She still were loth to yield herself to one 
That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. 
She pray'd me not to judge their cause from her 
That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power 
In knowledge : something wild within her breast, 



210 



130 THE PRINCESS. 

A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 
And she had nursed me there from week to week : 
Much had she learnt in little time. In part 
It was ill counsel had misled the girl 
To vex true hearts : yet was she but a girl — 
" Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! 
When comes another such ? never, I think, 
230 Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs." 

Her voice 
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands. 
And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird. 
That early woke to feed her little ones. 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light : 
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 

" Blame not thyself too much," I said, " nor blame 
240 Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws ; 
These were the rough ways of the world till now. 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free : 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
The shining steps of Kature, shares with man 



PART VII. 131 

His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 

Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 

If she be small, slight-natnred, miserable. 

How shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! 250 

Our place is much : as far as in us lies 

We two will serve them both in aiding her — 

Will clear away the parasitic forms 

That seem to keep her up but drag her down — 

Will leave her space to burgeon out of all 

Within her — let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undevelopt man, 

But diverse : could we make her as the man, 260 

Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man 5 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height. 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world : 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care. 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man, 

Like perfect music unto noble words : 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, 



132 THE PRINCESS. 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each and reverencing each, 

Distinct in individualities. 

But like each other ev'n as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 

280 May these things be ! " 

Sighing she spoke '' I fear 
They will not." 

" Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal ; seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils 
Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow. 
The single pure and perfect animal. 
The two-cell'd heart beating, with one full stroke, 

290 Life." 

And again sighing she spoke : " A dream 
That once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? " 

" Alone," I said, " from earlier than I know. 
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, 
I loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives 



PART VIL 133 

A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, 

Or pines in sad experience worse than death, 

Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime : 

Yet there was one thro' whom I loved her, one 

Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 

Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 

In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 

Interpreter between the Gods and men. 

Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 

On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 

Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 

Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, 

And girdled her with music. Happy he 

With such a mother ! faith in womankind 

lieats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 

His shall not blind his soul with clay." 

" But I," 
Said Ida, tremulously, " so all unlike — 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words : 
This mother is your model. I have heard 
Of your strange doubts : they well might be : I seem 
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 
You cannot love me." 

" Nay but thee " I said 



134 THE PRINCESS. 

" From yearlong poring on thy pietured eyes, 
320 Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw 
Thee woman thro' the crnst of iron moods 
That mask'd thee from men's reverence np, and forced 
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now, 
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee. 
Indeed I love : the new day comes, the light 
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 
Lived over : lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead. 
My haunting sense of hollow shows : the change, 
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear, 
330 Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 
Like yonder morning on the blind half-world ; 
Approach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows ; 
In that fine air I tremble, all the past 
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 
Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come 
Eeels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 
I waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride. 
My wife, my life. we will walk this world, 
340 Yoked in all exercise of noble end. 

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild 
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee : come. 
Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine are one : 
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me." 



PART VII. 135 



CONCLUSION. 

So closed our tale, of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose : 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceased 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

" I wish she had not yielded ! " then to me, 

" What, if you drest it up poetically ! " 

So pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent : 

Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf ? What style could suit ? 

The men required that I should give throughout 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque. 

With which we banter'd little Lilia first : 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power, 

For something in the ballads which they sang, 

Or in their silent influence as they sat. 

Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque. 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wish'd for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess — why 

Not make her true-heroic — true-sublime ? 

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close ? 

Which yet wit h such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, 



136 THE PRINCESS. 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists : 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, 

And yet to give the story as it rose, 

I moved as in a strange diagonal, 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part 
30 In our dispute : the sequel of the tale 

Had touch'd her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grasss^ 
She flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
" You — tell us what we are " who might have told^ 
For she was cramm'd with theories out of books, 
But that there rose a shout : the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now. 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these : we climb'd 
40 The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 
The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 
Trim hamlets ; here and their a rustic tower 
Half -lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond. 
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 



CONCLUSION. 137 

" Look there, a garden ! " said my college friend, 
The Tory member's elder son, ^' and there ! 50 

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off. 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
Some patient force to change them when we will, 
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 
But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat. 
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 60 

The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
In mock heroics stranger than our own; 
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 
Too comic for the solemn things they are, 
Too solemn for the comic touches in them, 
Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 
As some of theirs — God bless the narrow seas ! 70 

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad." 

" Have patience," I replied, " ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe >vildest dreams 



138 THE PRINCESS. 

Are but the needful preludes of the truth : 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, 
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith, 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides." 



80 In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, 
And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, 
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and look'd 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 
A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman, 
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 

90 A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; 
Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn ; 
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 
That stood the nearest — now address'd to speech - 
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 
W^elcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 
To follow : a shout rose again, and made 
The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer 



CONCLUSION. 139 

Prom slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset ; ( ), a shout loo 

More joyful than the city -roar that hails 

Premier or king ! Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe ? So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away. 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, 
So much the gathering darkness charm'd : we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 
Perchance upon the future man : the walls 
Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd, no 
And gradually the powers of the night. 
That range above the region of the wind, 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 
Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds. 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly. 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph 
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went- 



IN^OTES. 



PROLOGUE. 

Line 5. Their Institute. A Mechanics' Institute for the 
laboring classes. 

L. 12. Their names. Their botanical names. 

L. 15. Ammonites. Creatures of geologic times. 

L. 17. Celts and calumets. The former an instrument of 
stone or metal found in the tumuli of early Celtic peoples, 
and the latter the Indian peace-pipe. 

L. 18. Claymore. A large two-handed sword used by 
Scottish highlanders. 

L. 20. Laborious orient ivory. Refers to those balls within 
balls carved out of ivory by the Chinese. The artistic pur- 
pose of this passage is to emphasize the strange and varied 
luxury of Walter's house, and in keeping with this purpose we 
are told that the far-brought ivory has been wrought into shape 
laboriously. 

L. 21. Malayan crease. A dagger, cursed because, on ac- 
count of its form, it makes a terrible wound. 

L. 31. Laid about them. Hacked and heaved right and 
left from mere pleasure of fighting. 

L. 40. Her stature. A figure looms up larger against a 
fringe of light than in the broad brightness of day. 
141 



142 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 42. Brake. The archaic form of broke. 

L. 53. I kept the book. Tennyson snggests to ns here the 
atmosphere of " half-legend, half-historic " tales " that dealt 
with knights," preparing the mood of the reader for what is to 
follow. 

L. 64. Wisp. Will-o'-the-wisp, the light seen in marshy 
places. 

LI. 66-07. Echo answer'd in her sleep. It is rocks and 
buildings that reflect sound rather than fields and hollows. 
In Greek legend p]cho was a mountain nymph. 

L. 92. Lighter than a fire. Fire rises to heaven in its 
flame, aspiring in its lightness like the pointed arches of Gothic 
architecture. 

L. 93. Thro' one wide chasm. Time and frost had so rent 
the abbey walls that the park could be seen through the 
opening. 

L. 113. Breath'd the Proctor's dogs. The verb is here 
from breathe, meaning to exercise. A Proctor is a subordinate 
college officer who enforces discipline. His attendants who 
assist him in pursuing and arresting students are called, in col- 
lege slang, "bull-dogs.'" 

LI. 118-119. Above their heads. The old warrior of line 
104. 
L. 128. Convention. Conventionality, 

L. 141. Dowagers. Wealthy widows of rank. Deans. The 
Dean of a college has cliarge of the discipline. 

L. 161. Lost their weeks. An English undergraduate who 
is not in actual residence at his college for a certain number of 
weeks during the term cannot have that term counted, a cer- 



NOTES TO PROLOGUE. 143 

tain number of terms of actual residence being required for 
graduation. Residence is lost by absence from dinner in the 
college. 
L. 176. Read. Study. 

L. 180. So moulder'd. Because not compelled to do his 
teaching. 

L. 199. Chimeras. Fabulous monsters. 

L. 202. The tyrant. Time. 

LI. 225-229. A Gothic ruin. The prologue serves the ar- 
tistic purpose of preparing the mind for the fusion of fantasy 
and reality in the story. 

L. 231. Who told the "Winter's tale." Shakespeare. 

PART I. 

L. 6. Some sorcerer. Having in the prologue prepared the 
reader for strange things, Tennyson at once gives the story its 
proper atmosphere. In a world where men believe in sorcery 
or in a world of shadows, we may expect anything. 

L. 14. Weird seizures. An artistic justification of these 
weird seizures is suggested in the course of the notes, but it 
may be remarked here that Tennyson's son, in his memoir of 
his father, says of the Prince that, ' ' His too emotional tempera- 
ment was intended from an artistic point of view to emphasize 
his comparative want of power." Dawson in his study of the 
poem has said that the seizures are inartistic and unnecessary, 
and Rolfe joins him in the opinion. Certainly the Prince 
seems less princely on account of them, but possibly the poet 
meant to emphasize man's incompleteness before love has 



144 THE PRINCESS. 

healed him of sickly moods and purposeless inanition. They 
are quite in keeping with the atmosphere of the poem, and as 
Tennyson did not introduce them into the poem until the fifth 
edition, he must then have written them with a deliberate 
artistic purpose. 

L. 19. Court Galen. Galen was a famous Greek physician 
(circa 130), and was long the leading medical authority in 
Europe. 

L. 23. Half-canonized. One who has been placed in canon, 
or catalogue of saints of the Roman Catholic Church is said to 
be canonized. 

L. 33. Was proxy-wedded. In this case we are to suppose 
that when, after the marriage ceremony,' the Princess had gone 
to bed as a bride, the man who acted as substitute for the 
Prince, came into the bridal chamber, perhaps accompanied by 
a guard, and thrust his leg naked to the knee between the 
sheets, so in behalf of the Prince assuming to complete the 
marriage relation. Proxy-weddings, though the ceremonies 
differed, were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. 

L.43. A great labor of the loom. The reader should note 
how much more artistic this expression is than a more definite 
one could be. It fully suggests something rich and costly, and 
the costly richness is all we should know. 

L. 44. Therewithal. Therewith. 

L. 58. Grow long. The refraction of the atmosphere makes 
the moon appear elongated, and gives it a red color. 

L. 60. Snow'd it down. Because torn in such fine pieces. 
An effect of mood. 

L. 85. I grate on rusty hinges. Cyril means that his life is 



NOTES TO PART I. 145 

so inactive that he rusts in idleness like the hinges of an un- 
used gate. 

L. 87. Will crush. The student will be repaid for a careful 
study of the character of the old king. There are some feel- 
ings, some sentiments that he cannot understand. In his 
thought a pledge is a pledge, and a king's will is not to be 
opposed. The wish of the Prince to win the favor of the 
Princess as well as her hand, springs from a feeling of which 
he has no adequate conception. 

L. 96. A wind arose. The Prince is unlike his father ; he 
finds pleasure in day-dreams and longing. Into his mood of 
reverie, outside influences steal imperceptibly, making his 
waking-dreams at once real and unreal. 

LI. 100-101. The silver sickle. The moon, which is sickle- 
shaped when new, later growing into the round shield of the 
full moon. 

L, 106. Bastion'd walls. Strengthened with that kind of 
fortification called. a bastion. 

L.109. Tilth and grange. Cultivated fields and farm- 
houses. 

LI. 114-115. Like a wrinkling wind. Gama's cheeks were 
not round and full, but withered, and so his smile could only 
wrinkle, as the wind wrinkles glassy water into ridges. 

L.116. Without a star. Having no military decoration or 
badge of honor, since he had earned none. 

L. 124. I think. This line is a strikingly effective charac- 
ter hint. Gama is interested in comparatively trivial matters. 
A year stands out in his memory because it brought a failure 
of olives. 



146 THE PRINCESS. 

L, 130. But all she is.' This is more distinctly a charac- 
terization of the king himself, than of his daughter. He can- 
not understand a woman who takes upon heiself some of the 
activities which he has supposed to belong more particularly to 
men, and the problem of how to cope with the difiticulties that 
such activities in his daughter present is altogether beyond 
hiih. 

L, 163. Frets. Hindrances against which his will beats. 

L. 170. Liberties. An p]nglish law term for adjacent terri- 
tory, here the outskirts of the territory of the Princess, and so 
in this privileged sense belonging to it. 

L. 181. The summer. It is in the summer that the vine 
produces the grape from which the wine is made. 

L. 195. Masque. A spectacular theatrical representation 
such as Milton's Comus. 

L. 198. Holp. The old past tense of help. 

L. 201. Guerdon silence. To reward silence. 

L. 218. Rapt in her song. Here woman's gentleness tames 
the birds into fearlessness. 

L. 219. Pallas. Pallas Athene. She is represented as one 
of the three goddesses not subject to the influence of love. 

L. 226. Gave. Opened. 

LI. 233-234. Such a hand. Sloping a great deal to appear 
feminine. 

L. 239. Uranian Venus. Aphrodite, born according to 
Hesiod from Uranus and the sea, as distinguished from her 
other manifestation as the daughter, according to Homer, of 
Zeus and Dione. The former is the heavenly Aphrodite, as 



NOTES TO PART II. 147 

the latter is the goddess of a lower order, inciting to a purely 
earthly love, 

LI. 243-245. To float. These three lines have a touch of 
that vague beauty that is so large an element in poetry. It is 
a glimmering night, the moonlight is muffled, and the richness 



PART II. 

Song. This song has a less intimate connection with the 
story than have those that follow, but it suggests beforehand the 
mellowing influence of sorrow and misfortune. It does not hint 
to the reader the character of the denouement, for that would 
be inartistic, but it does bring up in our thoughts the reflec- 
tion that bitterness can be drowned in a connnon misfortune. 

LI. 8-9. Sang. Singing is suggestive of joy and beauty, 
and so the laurel gave the porch a charm like that of song. 
The poet may have meant merely that the laurel was haunted 
by birds and bees, or that the wind murnuired through the 
leaves. 

L. 10. Compact. Composed. Boss'd. Embossed, hav- 
ing raised work. 

L. 13. The Muses and the Graces. The muses, presiding 
over poetry, art, and science, were nine in number ; and the 
graces, personifications of female beauty, three. 

L. 22. Some clear planet. A planet where beauty and 
truth and majesty are less veiled and darkened with weakness 
and the disfigurement of earth. 

L. 27. She rose her height. Here Tennyson makes us 
know the tall majesty of the Princess, without afiirming it of 



148 THE PRINCESS. 

her. It is in such little touches as this that the artist shows 
himself. 

L. 28. Redound. Ordinarily a verb rather than a noun as 
here. 

L. 35. And he. This is Cyril speaking, and not the Prince. 

L. 38. Ideal. The image he has formed of you ; or, per- 
haps, he worships you as his ideal. 

L. 41, Light coin. This is a fine example of Tennyson's 
mastery of the music of verse. The c's, t's, n's, and I's alter- 
nate in just the right proportion to give the line the ring of thin 
metal. 

L. 52. Justlier balanced. Meaning that woman may through 
education, obtain her rights in the bargain of marriage. 

L. 00. Enter'd on the boards. Registered as students. 

L. 63. Odalisques. Female slaves of a Turkish harem. 

L. 65. That taught the Sabine. The nymph Egeria, who 
was said to have taught Numa Pompilius how to rule. . 

L. 66. The foundress of the Babylonian wall. Semiramis. 

L. 67. The Carian Artemisia. The queen who fought so 
well at Salamis, that Xerxes, whose ally she was, expressed 
the wish that his men might become women. 

L. 68. The Rhodope. A famous courtesan of Greece. 
With a part of her gains she was said to have built a pyramid 
near Memphis. 

L. 69. Clelia. A Roman girl who had been given as a 
• hostage to Porsena. She swam across the Tiber on horseback 
and escaped. Cornelia. The mother of the Gracchi. The 
Palmyrene. Zenobia. 



NOTES TO FART II. 149 

L. 71. Agrippina. The wife of Germanicus. She accom- 
panied him in his campaigns against the Germans, and on one 
occasion saved a defeated Roman army from destruction by- 
preventing the frightened soldiers on the left bank of the 
Rhine from destroying a bridge over which the retreating army 
must pass to find safety. 

LI. 72-74. Since to look. The Princess means that the 
sight of noble forms affects the spirit through the senses, and 
makes him who sees, nobler. 

L. 84. She spoke. Before going further with the narrative, 
the reader should make sure that he properly understands the 
character of the Princess as she has so far made herself known 
by her words. 

L. 87. Forms. Benches. 

L. 94. Headed like a star. With shining golden hair ; or 
possibly, having a face bright with beauty. 
' L. 97. The dame. Midas, according to one account, con- 
fided the secret of his asses' wars to his wife alone, but she, un- 
able to keep it, whispered it to the water among the sedge. 

L. 105. Woaded. Dyed with blue from the woad-plant. 

L. 112. Appraised. Approved. The Lycian custom. He- 
rodotus tells us that the Lycians took their names from their 
mothers, and traced descent in the female line. 

L. 113. That lay at wine. The Etruscan women, who 
were depicted as reclining at banquets with their husbands. 
Lars was an honorary designation in Etruria ; and Lucumo 
was a title given there to princes and priests. 

L. 117. Fulmined. Thundered. Laws Salique. The laws 
of the Salian Franks did not permit women to inherit royal 
power. 



150 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 126. Pales. Fence. 

L. 135. Thence the man's. If greater size were really in- 
dicative of greater power, man's advantage was stili that of 
longer use only. 

L. 144. Verulam. Bacon. 

L. 148. • Sappho. A Greek poetess. 

L. 151. Lapt. Enfolded. 

L. 154. She rose. The figure must be spiritually and not 
literally conceived. Her feeling grew to exaltation in the 
thought of the future, and her words rose to the fervor of ora- 
tory that bears things before it as a wind. 

L. 164. Whose thoughts. The vital thing in human life 
is the intercommunication of ideas, which is ours by the gift 
of language. This is the blood that feeds the growth of all 
good that man can know. 

L. 168. As when a boat. As the boat tacks, the sail is for 
a moment in a position to be tossed one way and then another 
by the wind. Psyche at the instant of discovering that the 
course of her words must veer is in the ' same fluttering uncer- 
tainty. 

L. 180. Softer Adams. Women assuming the r51e of men. 

LI. 181-182. Sirens tho' they be. In the classic story the 
sirens with their singing and their beauty lured to destruction 
sailors going by. 

■ L. 208. No more of deadly. The occasional occurrence of 
the partitive genitive with an adjective object of the preposition 
is to be noted in Tennyson. It secures vagueness, a thing 
necessary here where some uncertain punishment is only ap- 
prehended. 



NOTES TO PART 11. 151 

L. 209. Garth. A fruit garden. 

L. 214. To the trumpet. At the sound of the trumpet. 

LI. 215-210. Made to gild. This is hardly a happy figure. 
To grasp it the reader must think of the word gild as if it 
meant merely to make pleasant. 

L. 222. The gaunt old Baron. Note the succession of hard 
consonants. The tone-color materially helps in forming the 
picture. 

L. 224. Bestrode my Grandsire. To defend him. 

L. 227. Branches current. In different branches of the 
house of Florian the old, baron's warm loyalty to the royal 
house has not yet grown cold. 

L.241. Glean. Cyril is talking the language of compliment, 
humbling himself before her wisdom. 

L. 264. Lucius Junius Brutus. He condemned liis sons to 
death for treason. 

L. 270. Of half this world. Psyche means of course the 
woman-half. vShe is arguing with her better nature, still 
hoping to influence them to save her from the need of deciding 
between love and duty. Knowing that she will yield, she yet 
wishes to make for her yielding as good terms as possible. 

L. 281. Like some wild creature. Psyche is under tlie 
stress of more than one passion ; she has failed in duty to her 
patroness, she is undecided as to the outcome of it all, and she 
is filled with emotion at meeting her brother after so many years. 

L. 290. Our mother. Here the real Psyche forgets the 
role it is hers to play, and is in a moment's change tender, lov- 
ing, womanly. 

L. 304. Her mother's color. That worn by Lady Blanche's 
pupils. 



152 THE PRINCESS. 

LI. o05-307. All her thoughts. The recader's attention 
need hardly be called to the beautiful picture of Melissa here, 
but he should pause and dwell on the illumination of the 
simile. Everything in Melissa's heart is sweet and pure, and 
open for all the world to see, but just now the clearness of her 
soul is disturbed by a doubt and a wonder, as the light from 
the bottom agates is bent and broken by the running water. 

L. 319. The Danaid. According to the myth, the daughters 
of Danaiis were compelled to labor forever at the task of filling 
a leaky vase. 

L. 320, Ruin. The college and its purpose fall to ruin. 

L. 323. Aspasia. A Greek woman famous for her intel- 
lectual powers and her friendship with Pericles. 

L. 328. For Solomon. Meaning that man may come to 
learn of woman, instead of woman of man. 

L. 332. Tho' Madam. Cyril is again speaking the language 
of compliment, telling Psyche that they should be the taught 
and she, the teacher. 

L. 335. Something more. What something more ? 

LI. 355-356. And jewels. Sayings that have become im- 
mortal. The stretched foretinger seems to point to them, 
since it is the forefinger, though merely holding them up for 
inspection. 

L. 376. An empty hull. A man who knows nothing, has, 
of course, more to learn. Cyril has also learned something 
that science does not teach. 

L. 381. Vacant pang. Resulting from vacancy of the 
heart. 
L. 382. The bigger boy. Cupid. 



NOTES TO PART II. 153 

L. 385. Stomacher. A part of a woman's dress, worn in 
front. 

L. 388. Sorcerer's malison. Sorcerer's curse, or evil pre- 
diction. 

LI. 398-399. Zone unmanu'd. His female attire made him 
feel unmanly. 

L. 400. Thirsty plants. The students, thirsty because so 
long deprived of opportunities for learning. 

L. 404. Bassoon. A deep toned wind-instrument of wood. 
His voice, like a bassoon in its heaviness, he wishes by " minc- 
ing mimicry " to make lighter and more feminine in tone. 

L. 415. Colors gayer. The sunlight on the morning mist 
gives the colors of the rainbow. 

L. 419. Who rapt. The word rapt is of frequent occurrence 
in Tennyson. He uses it to indicate intentness of almost any 
sort. 

L. 420. Astraean age. According to the myth, Astraea 
the goddess of justice, was to return to earth in a future golden 
age. 

L. 426. Falsely brown. Lady Blanche is the foil for the 
Princess and Psyche. • She is as false in herself as in the color 
of her hair, the false brown of her autumn tresses suggesting 
oth«r falseness. 

L. 432. Smoothed a petted peacock. Here Tennyson deli- 
cately suggests woman's inherent need of loving. Even when 
busied with the studies of the schools that need makes itself 
known unconsciously in the Princess. 

L. 439. Of the older. This belongs grammatically to the 
word others. 



154 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 443. The Fates. Three in number. They were muffled 
as concealing the future. 

L. 444. Hitting all. Meaning that she talked in a tone of 
kindly satire. 

PART III. 

Song. This song is one of the best known that Tennyson 
has written. No other poet has wrought into his longer poems 
so many beautiful lyrics. The student of Tennyson's verse 
will do well to study carefully the tonal qualities of this one, 
noting the succession of round vowels, and the lulling reit- 
eration of s's as they alternate with more liquid tones. 

L. 2. Came furrowing. Before the prow of a ship the blue 
water piles up in white masses, and in the same way in front 
of the dawn the billowy clouds are piled up in furrowed gold. 

L. 6. Above the darkness. As the morning sunlight 
touches high objects first, the Muses' heads were earliest 
touched by the sunlight "from their native East." 

L. 24. Fell to canvass. Any accession to the ranks of 
Lady Psyche's pupils stirs the venomous spirit in Lady 
Blanche. She is glad to find opportunity for belittling the 
new pupils, and the bitterness in her heart lends keenness to 
her spiritual vision. 

L. 34. In rubric, lied lettering in manuscripts or books is 
rubric. Melissa sets her thoughts in rubric by blushing. 

L. 52. Those lilies. The paleness of her cheeks. 

L. 55. Ganymedes. The Trojan boy, Ganymede, was so 
beautiful that Zeus stole him away to become his cup-bearer in 
Olympus. 



NOTES TO PART in. 155 

L. 56. Vulcans. In the myth, Vulcan was cast down from 
Olympus to earth, and was lame ever after. 

L. 65. Much I bear. Does Melissa here paint herself as 
an unfilial child, or does the fact that she criticizes her mother 
more particularly characterize Lady Blanche herself ? 

L. 68. The state of things. The conventional relation be- 
tween man and woman. For the cause of Blanche's bitterness 
we may look to her own married life, and we may consider here 
whether Ida's feeling on the subject of woman's place in the 
world is natural to her or something that has been cultivated 
in her. 

LI. 72-73. Grew inosculated. Became closely united. 

L. 74. Shiver. Literally, vibrate, but note the wonderful 
effect, the rounding-out of the figure till even a shivering string 
has life and life's joy and pain, that comes with this poetically 
imaginative substitution. 

L. 90. An eagle clang. The crane chatters and the dove 
murmurs, but the eagle clangs of its love to the heavens. 

L. 96. Her and her. Melissa and Psyche. 

L. 97. Hebes. Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Here, was 
cup-bearer in Olympus, before Ganymede. 

L. 99. The Samian Here. Wife of Zeus. 

L. 100. A Memnon. The allusion is to a statue of Memnon, 
an Egyptian deity, called the "Vocal Memnon" because pop- 
ularly supposed to give forth a musical note when struck by 
the rays of the rising sun. 

L. 103. Balusters. The balustrade. The accent is changed 
to the second syllable. 

L. 104. Champaign. A level landscape. 



156 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 111. Prime. Primeval. 

L. 120. Fabled nothing fair. Made nothing appear fairer 
than reality. 

L. 121. Your example pilot. A pilot simply indicates the 
course; he does not steer. 

,L. 122. The hush'd amaze. Note the condensation in this 
line. Feeling, gesture, and look all become the one thing, 
amazement. 

L. 126. Limed ourselves. A metaphor from the use of 
bird-lime to ensnare birds. 

L. 143. We will seat. Cyril readily understands that am- 
bition is the fundamental thing in Lady Blanche. In him, 
tliought goes naturally from the beginning to the end at one 
leap, and in the success of the Prince he sees his own success, 
by which Psyche as well as Ida will be freed from any desire 
to rule over a woman's college, leaving that to Lady Blanche. 

L. 179. Retinue. Accent on second syllable. 

L. 186. Might have seem'd. To the Prince she might ap- 
pear liarsh. 

L. 198. Poor boy. Ida's " erring pride " makes her speak 
of the Prince in this way, since he has not reached her intel- 
lectual condition. 

L. 212. Vashti. She was summoned to appear before the 
king that he might show her beauty to the people, and refused 
to come. 

L. 215. Breathes full East. He means that she goes to the 
East to find conlirmation of her opinion, that which leans 
to her. Vashti was a Persian queen, and her example of in- 
dependent opposition to the will of man strengthens the inde- 



NOTES TO PART HI. 157 

pendence of the Princess. In the East, woman's condition has 
not been so fortunate as in the West, so that the East gives 
the Princess more cause for indignation. 

L. 227. Issue. Deeds as the outcome of her life in the 
place of children. 

L. 230. Peace. That the Princess is touched by this last 
appeal, as shown in her reply, indicates a latent tenderness in 
her, more of womanly than she would have appear. 

L. 246. Pou sto. Greek, meaning, where I may stand. 
The Greek philosopher Archimedes said that he could move 
the earth, if given a lever long enough and a place where he 
might stand. 

L. 254. The sandy footprint. The Princess, following up 
her thought in lines 288 and 280, tells the Prince that the 
footprints of human endeavor are not washed away, but 
harden into stone. 

L. 2t)l. South-sea-isle taboo. A regular system of inter- 
diction among the aborigines of the South Sea islands. 

L. 202. Gynaeceum. The woman's quarters in a Greek 
house. 

L. 264. A passion. The Princess uses the most intense 
expression available, making her purpose fully a thing of 
feeling. 

L. 269. Against the pikes. This allusion is to Arnold von 
Winkelreid, who at Sempach gathered a score of Austrian 
pikes to his own breast, making way for the charge of his 
comrades. 

L. 270. The fiery gulf. An earthquake at Rome having 
opened a great crack in the crust, Curtius, to avert the anger 
of the gods, leaped with his steed into the fiery chasm. 



158 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 276. The color. The rainbow formed in the mist over 
the cataract. 

L. 282. That practice betters. Is the creator to be thought 
of as a workman who by practice has been able to create man 
superior to the earlier life forms ? 

L. 285. Diotima. A woman of Mantinea, said to have 
been an instructor of Socrates. Because he denied the Greek 
religion, Socrates was condemned to die by drinking hemlock. 

L. 298. Encarnalize their spirits. The Princess thinks 
that by the practice of vivisection, and by the study of "this 
microcosm," the human body, men debauch their spiritual 
natures and become sensual. The wonders of the material 
world, so long as they are merely known to us, are a sort of 
spiritual food, but when through familiarity they have become 
common-place, they change to a sort of spiritual poison. 

L. 291). Hangs. Awaits decision. 

L. 308. All creation. The operation of natural laws must 
result in a set of definite effects from any given set of causes. 
Setting these iirst causes in operation would, therefore, result 
in producing the whole series of effects, so making all creation 
one act at once. - 

L. 313. Our weakness. Because we cannot know all the 
causes in operation at any given time, and, if we did know 
them, could not reason out the long series of effects to follow 
from them through the centuries, we must think of creation as 
a succession of events, " the shadow, Time," 

LI. 325-327. Where paced. Note how the word paced- 
suggests the mood of thought and meditation in which the 
demigods from the fields of Elysium looked upon the beauty 
of the lofty towers streaked by the filmy vapor. 



NOTES TO PART TV. 159 

L. 331. Corinna's triumph. Over the poet Pindar, the 
•' Theban eagle," with whom she contested at the public games 
for the prize of poetry. 

PART IV. 

Song. This lyric takes up the mood of the concluding lines 
of Part III. , the mood of enchanted reverie that comes with 
the decline of day. It has the charm of vagueness, the misty 
atmosphere of twiliglit, and is a marvel of tonal beauty lilve 
the one following Part II. The student will hardly fail to note 
how the effect of vagueness is aided by the fact that some of 
the lines end with unaccented syllables. Through the vague- 
ness is hinted the unity of influence that grows out of the 
union of two hearts in marriage, a thing that is but a platitude 
if too directly and definitely stated. 

L. 4. Lean and wrinkled. The precipices show age like an 
old man's face on which the storms of years have beaten. 

L. 12. Planted level feet. Walked on the level ground. 

LI. 33-34. When unto dying eyes. The charm of the poem 
is in its suggestion, as here, of mingled joy and sadness. The 
casement "grows a glimmering square," as the dawn brightens 
through it into the darkened room, but while this foreshows 
the possibility of joy, death draws near and puts the joy away 
from the dying eyes. So memory lights up the joys that have 
been, but are to be no more. There is the shadow, like the 
haze of an autumn landscape, to darken over beauty and 
promise, making the beauty softer and sweeter, but full of a 
wild, unfathomable regret, a regret that has no seeming excuse 
for being, since it comes we know not whence or why. But of 
all sadly sweet things, at once the sweetest and the saddest, 



1 60 THE PRINCESS. 

is an imagined love, so real that the lips feign kisses " on lips 
that are for others. ' ' 

L. 45. Moulder'd lodges. Mouldered lodges are types of 
the ideas in which man's thought has dwelt, ideas now left 
with the dead past to fall in ruin and decay. 

L. 51). Rough kex. A provincial term for dry stalks of 
hemlock. Here it means any wild growth coming up through 
the cracks in the mosaic. 

L. GO. Beard-blown goat. The goat on the top of a ruined 
pillar with his beard blown by the wind. 

L. 01. Wild figtree. Particularly remarkable for the 
strength with which its roots rend asunder ruined buildings, 
as noted by the llouian poets. 

L. 64. Hope, a poising eagle. The word burns must here 
be understood in its imaginative sense. It gives us in its in- 
tensity the eagerness of Hope, a poising eagle waiting for tiie 
morrow. 

L. 6S. The other distance. The future. 

L. 75. Swallow. The repetitions in this first stanza and 
its general rapidity of movement indicate the mood of the 
singer. Longing breathes in it, such longing as leaves no 
mood for thought or any other emotion. The reader will do 
well to follow carefully the alternation of thought or feeling as 
the one or the other is in excess, up to the insistent exhortation 
of the last stanza. 

L. 100. Ithacensian suitors. In the absence of Ulysses, his 
wife, Penelope, at Ithaca was besieged with suitors, who, not 
recognizing Ulysses on his return, Smiled without knowing why. 

L. 104. Bulbul. This is the oriental name for the nightin- 



NOTES TO PART IV. 161 

gale, here pictured as singing to tlie rose. Gulistan is tlie 
Persian for rose-garden. The Princess means that tlie Prince 
is not a niglitingale wlrose love-plaint will make the rose burst 
the veil it wears to see the singer. 

LI. 105-107. Marsh-divers. The marsh-diver and the mea- 
dow-crake, unmusical birds, will show their kindred to the 
singer by a likeness of voice in song. 

L. 110. When we made bricks in Egypt. Refers to the 
bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt before the exodus, 
which has become a type of all bondage, as here of that of 
woman to man. 

L. 121. Valkyrian hymns. The Valkyrs were the "choosers 
of the slain" in the northern mythology. They were repre- 
sented as beautiful but terrible maidens who became visible or 
invisible at will, and whose duty it was to conduct to Valhalla 
those slain in battle. 

L. 126. Mock-Hymen. Hymen was the god of marriage. 

L. 129. Sphered. The sphere is a type or symbol of com- 
pleteness. 

L. 136. Dragg'd my brains. This expression serves to sug- 
gest the difficulty the Prince has in recalling such a song. 

L. lo7. Bell-mouth'd glass. The wine-glass. 

L. 139. Careless, careless. Note the effect of this repetition 
in hinting the Prince's mood of irritation. 

L. 149. And fled. The subject of this verb is the concluding 
word of the sentence, loomen. 

L. 162. Rapt. Here there is intentness in the sense that 
the horrible fall is inevitable. The word rapt shuts out every 
other consideration but the certainty of her falling. 



162 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 183. Caryatids. Representations of living figures used 
as columns to support an entablature. 

LI. 185-186. The hunter rued. Actaeon, who, in the old 
myth, having ventured to look upon Diana and her nymphs 
bathing, was turned into a stag. The valves are gates. 

L. 194. The Bear. The constellation commonly known . as 
the Big Dipper, composed of seven stars, the seven sloiv suns. 

L. 207. A Judith. A Hebrew heroine of the apocryphal 
book of Judith. By a stratagem she succeeded in putting to 
death Holof ernes, the captain of an Assyrian army sent against 
Judea by Nebuchadnezzar. 

L. 211. I pitied her. This is the one interruption to the 
directness of Florian's story. There are other things upon 
which he might well comment, but it is only Melissa's trouble 
that touches the vein of thoughtful sentiment in him. In this 
connection see Part III. , lines 82-87. 

L. 227. Proper to. Characteristic of. 

L. 242. Musky-circled. Enveloped in perfume. 

L. 243. Boles. Tree trunks. 

L. 247. Bubbled. Note the effect of light and overflowing 
spontaneity of song suggested by this word. 

L. 250. Mnemosyne. The goddess of memory. 

L. 252. Haled. Hauled or dragged. 

L. 255. Mystic fire. St. Elmo's fire, an electrical ball of 
light that plays about the masts of ships. 

L. 260. Blowzed. Ruddy. 

L. 261. Druid rock. The earliest religious rites of which 
we know in the isle of Britain were those of the Druids. They 



NOTES TO PART IV. 163 

were usually conducted near some huge rock. A number of 
these rocks are still to be found in England. 

L. 2G8. Mews. Sea-fowls, gulls. 

L. 271. The Lady Blanche. She is artistically necessary 
to this scene. Some severe things must be said, the circum- 
stances require them ; but such words as are demanded of her, 
Ida herself can hardly say. They come naturally from Lady 
Blanche, and, while arousing the reader against her, stimulate 
a sympathetic appreciation of the difficulties that beset the 
Princess. 

L. 275. The Castalies. From Castalij, the mythical spring 
on Olympus, sacred to the Muses. Here the pluralized form 
stands for sources of culture of any sort. 

L. 282. Warmer currents. Currents of feeling. 

L. 296. Planed. Made the path to Lady Psyche smooth 
and easy. 

L. 301. Yet I. This line is a most effective character 
stroke. The Lady Blanche's bold assumption presupposes in 
Lady Psyche, simply on the strength of her own dislike, all 
the faults she wishes to find in her. 

L. 307. Their mask was patent. It was clear that they 
were playing a part. Their mask, the disguise and pretence 
of woman, was open and understood. 

L. 310. Had gone. Would have gone. 

L. 314. Less grain. She means that Lady Psyche lacks 
the fiber of character, being like touchwood in which decay 
has destroyed the grain. This carries out the figure of a 
nursery or place where young trees are grown. 

L. 317. Public use. The public good. 



164 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 326. Blazon'd. Emblazonry publishes to every observ- 
ant eye the facts it would make known. It needs no patient 
reading of word after word, and Cyril's conduct had this essen- 
tial quality of unmistakable meaning. 

L. 339. The wisp. The will-o'-the-wisp. 

L. 343. Our mind. The Princess has a regal Avay of dis- 
missing difficulties and doing her own will. This is a part of 
her character, and here, perhaps, she changes her purpose to 
accord with her feelings, because the tirade of Lady Blanche 
makes it possible for her to do so. She has not before permit- 
ted herself to think of the child as a lost lamb. From this 
point on the child is more distinctly instrumental in influencing 
her mood. 

L. 344. Stretch'd. Nothing could be more powerful in 
picturing the whole physical and spiritual self of Lady Blanche 
than this line and the following. The bare, protuberant ugli- 
ness of a vulture throat, stretched in baffled rage, is full of 
suggestion and character. 

L. 347. The cuekoo. The cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests 
of other birds. 

L. 352. A Niobean. Apollo and Artemis punished the pre- 
sumption of Niobe by killing all her seven sons and seven 
daughters. Melissa here appeals to Ida's judgment as if it 
were, like that of Apollo and Artemis, a bolt of heaven. 

L. 358. Stared in. The personification of fear here serves 
a double purpose. It makes possible the condensation charac- 
teristic of Tennyson, and, by the activity of the fear as personi- 
fied, in effect increases its intensity. 

L. 359. Whereby. This is here equivalent to the phrase by 



NOTES TO PART IV. 165 

which, instead of having its modern meaning, on account of 
which, or by means of wliich. Observe tliat the introduction 
of tlie woman-post serves to turn tlie current of tlie story, re- 
lieving Ida of the difficulty of passing judgment on some per- 
plexing problems. 

L. 306. When the wild. Tlie peasant "rights himself," or 
avenges his wrongs, by burning the ricks of his landlord. 
Notice the jconj unction of fire and stormy cloud, as of anger 
reddening against the gloom of wrath. There had been trouble 
with the agricultural laborers of England shortly before this 
was written. 

L. 871. The dead hush. The passion in the Princess had 
so dwarfed every other interest in those about her that all are 
silent watching. 

L. 398. Spoke impetuously. He is angered by his father's 
interference, and wishes to disavow that method of winning her. 

L. 401. Regal compact. Born of the compact between 
their royal fathers. 

LI. 404-407, I bear. He means that from childhood to age 
his life is not his own, but one devoted to her. 

L. 409. Vague brightness. The Princess. Vague because 
known to the imagination only, as the brightness of the moon 
is but vague to a baby, before it has any conception of size or 
space. 

L. 411. Long breezes. Long, because coming from so far. 

L. 411. Rapt. Intent always upon the South, and so hav- 
ing always the inmost spirit of the South. 

L. 415. Clang. As the eagle in Part III., line 90. Lapt in 
wreaths. Enfolded in the softened radiance that lights up the 
thin crests of the waves. 



166 THE PBINCESS. 

L. 418. Sphered up with Cassiopeia. Placed among the 
stars like the Ethiopean queen from whom the constellation is 
named. 

L. 419. Persephone. The myth records that Pluto carried 
her off from earth to Hades, and there made her his queen. 

L. 422. In this frequence. In the presence of so many. 

L. 426. Landskip. Landscape. 

L. 430. Involved. Included as only a part of her beauty. 

L. 439. more than. Notice in this and the two succeed- 
ing lines the climax of feeling in the Prince. He began by ad- 
dressing himself to Ida's reason, but for the moment emotion 
overpowers him. 

L. 445. In the teeth. The word clenched in this line fur- 
nishes an example of transferred epithet. Literally it belongs 
to teeth^ but by being transferred to antagonisms it intensifies 
the effect of bitter opposition. 

L. 446. To follow up. For a less definite and strenuous 
expression of this thought, that it is a part of manliness to seek 
what is worthiest, regardless of success or failure, compare 
Browning's lines from Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

" What I aspired to be, 
And what not, comforts me ; 
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale." 

See also Guinevere in the Idylls of the King. The queen says, 
" We must needs love the highest when we see it." 

L. 453. With foam. Not water, because water in com- 
motion turns to foam. 

L. 454. But there rose. Tennyson again changes the course 



NOTES TO PART IV. 167 

of the story in order to save Ida from the necessity of saying 
the bitter tilings tliat are in her heart. We must know tlxat 
she can be stirred by great passion, but she must not wholly 
lose her womanliness for us by saying the bitter and unjust 
things to which she is prompted by her feelings. 

L. 458. Herded ewes. This has the double effect of suggest- 
ing the great number of the women and their gentle natures. 

L. 408. The placid marble Muses. The contrast here is 
the more effective because of the devotion to the arts for which 
the university was founded. The Muses look peace as with a 
sort of admonitory chiding for devotees who have forgotten to 
what service they have given themselves. 

L. 474. Glares ruin. The red revolving light both suggests 
ruin and glares upon it, lighting it up in the tempest without. 

L. 482. Maiden banner. A maiden, banner because never 
before unfurled. 

L. 484. Protomartyr. First martyr. 

L. 495. Turnspits for the clown. Those that tend spits 
on which they cook meat for clownish husbands. 

L. 503. A stroke. Such sunshine seems cruel, because it 
brings out the hard outlines of the rock above the softened dark- 
ness. 

L. 505. She floated. The Princess remains so much mis- 
tress of herself and of circumstances that she does not lose her 
natural grace of movement. More than that, so much pur- . 
pose is in her that she seems but the embodiment of that pur- 
pose, a spiritual being floating towards them. Note the fine 
irony that is still at her command when she speaks. 

L. 523. Lord you. Call you a lord. 



168 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 527. Push them out. If the Princess here shows herself 
unlovely, she does so after the fashion of a king's daughter. 
There is justification for her severity, and in view of the inscrip- 
tion on the gates, she even inclines towards mercy. This it is 
now possible for her to do because of the letters from the two 
kings. Before this she could not have made decision about 
them without seeming to err on the side of cruelty or of 
weakness. 

L. 538. The doubt. A feeling of uncertainty that was a 
part of his seizure. This seizure like the cadence at the close of 
a strain of music, serves as a gentle descent from the climax 
here, up to which the story has so far been leading. This is, 
as it were, the climax of entanglement. Beginning with 
Part v., the story develops to the climax of the denouement. 

L. 558. Set into sunrise. In northern latitudes, in summer 
the sun simply dips down to the horizon and rises again; so to 
him mischance instead of being darkness, was but a little 
lessening of brightness before a greater glow. 

L. 579. Favor. This is a term borrowed from the 
language of chivalry, and was used to designate the token of 
his lady's favor, which the knight wore in the tourney. This 
little interlude serves to remind the reader anew that the story 
is only a tale told in jest. 

PART V. 

L. 2. A stationary voice. A sentinel. 

L. 13. Innumerous. Tennyson uses this word instead of in- 
numerable to get the sound of s with its suggestion of lisping 
leaves. 

L. 18. Their baldness. You can afford to stop and smile 



NOTES TO PART V. 16'9 

over these lines. Notice that the two kings, in wagging their 
heads up and down, would expose to view the tops of their 
heads rather than their faces, so making of them a baldness 
to the vision of the Prince. 

L. 25. A draggled mawkin, thou. This last is addressed 
to the Prince, and not to Gama. Mawkin, for malkin^ a 
kitchen wench. 

L. 28. From the sheath. Prom the covering of the bud. 

L. 82. Among his shadows. The shadow of his seizures. 

L. 37. Transient. This word is derived from the Latin 
verb transeo, meaning to cross over, to which meaning Tenny- 
son makes it revert here. A thing that crosses over is change- 
able, whence the ordinary meaning of the word. 

L. 38. Woman-slough. Woman garments. 

L. 58. Charr'd and wrinkled. Extinguished fires of passion 
or of pain and misery leave their black marks on faces as on 
wood. A powerful expression. 

L, 62. What have you done. The sweet naturalness of this 
must appeal to every reader. The sympathy for Psyche that 
all this develops is meant to react upon our thought of the 
Princess and her injustice. Psyche's story is for this reason 
an essential part of the whole narrative. 

L. 76. Remorseful Cyril. His song, it is to be remembered, 
was responsible for the disclosure of their identity. 

L. 101. What might. Psyche speaks impulsively, and not 
with the purpose of implying a promise to Cyril. This is clear 
from the fact that afterwards, like one caught, she feigns 
death, and neither speaks nor stirs. 

L. 110. Parle. Parley. 



170 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 114. Rods of steel. Rods of punishment. 

L. 121. The trampled year. The year is trampled when 
its fruits, the grain in the field, and the purple vine are trod- 
den under foot. 

L. 124. A smoke. In connection with the thought of war, 
the mind readily receives the picture of the smoke of burning 
dwellings, a smoke for which, in Ida's eyes, the Prince would 
be responsible, and so " three times a monster." 

L. 125. Lightens scorn. The Prince is not troubled when 
she merely flashes scorn at him as lightning. That springs 
from anger, not dislike, but hatred will come to her, he knows, 
when she sees that he has been, however indirectly, the author 
of general ruin. 

L. 132. Shards with catapults. Catapults were Roman 
engines of war answering in use to our cannon; engines capable 
of dashing the city to pieces, making them like shards of 
broken pottery. 

L. 134. The lifting. The wonderful directness of this is 
like a revelation. In the Idijlls Tennyson makes use of a simi- 
lar expression, and repeats it slightly changed. 

" And in tlie heart of Arthur, pain was lord." 

Is it, however, in keeping with the rest of the speech, or does 
it seem strained and affected ? 

L. 141. Ribs of wreck. The solid framework of a wrecked 
ship, its ribs, remain when the rest is gone. 

L. 146. That idiot legend. The king means the story that 
the Prince was of unsound mind. See Part I. , line 5, et seq. 

L. 154. Comes. This verb is in the same construction as the 
word does in the line preceding. 



NOTES TO PART V. 171 

' L. 157. Tho* dash'd. Though the blood upon him reddens 
what he kisses. 

"But my sword was wet with the blood of the foe, and my 
raiment with mine own blood ; and I was aweary with the 
day's work, and sick with many strokes, and methought I was 
fainthig into death. And there thou wert before me, full of 
life, and ruddy, and smiling, both lips and eyes ; thy raiment 
clean and clear, thine hands unstained with blood. Then 
didst thou take me by my bloody and weary hand, and 
didst kiss my lips grown ashen pale, and thou saidst, ' Come 
with me.' " William Morris : "The House of the Wolfings." 

L. 159. Your mother. In a few lines here the king betrays 
his spiritual blindness and blankness. He can understand 
deeds, but not thoughts and feelings. 

L. 170. Gagelike. Like a glove or gage of battle, flung in 
challenge to combat. 

L. 172. You clash. Things that clash, of course, come to- 
gether and with violence. Here the word suggests the king's 
rough temper as well as the mere fact of his failing to recog- 
nize differences in women. 

L. 178. A maiden moon. A new moon that sparkles on a 
sty because inexperienced to detect the difference between a 
sty and a palace. 

L. 179. Satyr. A mythological being, half human, half 
goat, here used as a type of the animal in man. 

L. 181. Truer. The Prince means that woman yields to the 
suggestions of conscience a readier obedience than man. 

L. 182. Severer in the logic. A life which maintains 
throughout its course a consistent conformity to certain un- 



172 THE PRINCESS. 

changing principles of action may be said to be severe in the 
logic of a life. Woman, it seems to the Prince, is more se- 
verely logical in her life than man, because she is more loyal 
to principle, less changeable, more consistent. 
L. 185. Whole. Complete and perfect. 
L. 186. Minted in the golden. Observe here how the v^^ord 
golden, though used in another connection, suggests that the 
mintage is golden. 

L. 188. Lines of green. Tennyson has seen that green is a 
color of fresher purity than white even. 
L. 190. Piebald. Mottled. 
L. 195. Mooted. Made a matter of question. 
L. 205. I would he had. Gama's mood here, it will be ob- 
served, is brighter and livelier than usual. The anxiety under 
which he has been bowed down, and now the sudden release 
from that, together with the support of the Prince, have com- 
bined to quicken all his faculties, so that he even ventures upon 
taking the initiative in a measure. 
L. 213. Buss'd. Kissed. 

L. 222. Foursquare. Prepared to meet opposition on all 
sides. 

L. 223. White hands. A character hint. 
L. 227. A thousand rings. The rings in every bole are 
rings of spring, because during the life of the tree each spring 
adds a new one. 

L. 230. Desire in me. Tennyson, like his predecessor in 
the laureate's office, Wordsworth, finds something personal 
and sympathetic in nature. He does not interpret his mood 
into nature, as had been done by earlier poets, but the mood 
of nature reacts upon his own and heightens it. 



NOTES TO PART V. 173 

L. 248. The shadow. Showed a likeness to Ida in the 
morning sunlight as it played upon the three brothers. 

L. 250. Those three stars. The stars in the belt of Orion, 
the mighty hunter, who was transferred to the heavens as the 
constellation of that name. 

LI. 252-254. Fiery Sirius. A very bright star in the con- 
stellation of Orion. As it alters hue near the horizon, so their 
helmets in the clear light of the morning flashed with a new 
brightness. 

L. 259. A wandering hand. Moving about in gesticulations. 
L. 266. 'Sdeath. An abbreviation of an old oath: By 
God's death. 

L. 280. And, right or wrong. This animal indifference to 
anything but his own will is perfectly in keeping with what we 
know of Arac so far. 

L. 282. With solemn rites. This hints at something not 
wholly intellectual in the Princess. The student should watch 
foT all suggestions of normal human weakness and womanly 
tenderness in the undercurrent of Ida's real self. 

L. 284. Her that talk'd down. St. Catherine of Alexandria. 

L. 287. Foughten. Tennyson employs this form of the 
past participle in the Idylls also. 

L. 319. False daughters. False because hatched by her 
from the eggs of ducks or geese. 

L. 324. Flush her babbling wells. Babbling wells must be 
shallow wells, from which the water gushes out joyously as 
from a spring, and the blood of a great battle might flood them. 

L. 340. Her will. Consider whether Tennyson could, after 
showing us the firm strength of purpose of the Princess, have 



174 THE PRINCESS. 

that purpose roughly broken without jarring upon the artistic 
beauty of the story. 

L. 355. Tomyris. Queen of the Massagetfe, who after de- 
feating and killing Cyrus the Great, avenged herself upon his 
dead body. 

L. 369. Of living hearts. A custom in India required the 
widowed wife to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her 
husband, and perish with hiin. 

L. 371. Prophetic pity. To save them from the hardships 
of woman's lot there, mothers were accustomed to throw their 
female children into the Ganges, there to drown or be seized 
by hovering vultures. 

L. 389. The striplings ! Indignation swells in the breast 
of the Princess as she thinks how those three "striplings" 
have come in disguise "for their sport," and have made a 
mockery of her fair purposes. 

L. 394. What mother's blood. This resolves the wonder 
of Arac's rough manhood, and Gama's effeminacy. It is the 
mother's blood in both Arac and the Princess. 

L. 398. His mother lives. This is a repetition of Ida's 
feeling for woman in particular, but it is womanly tenderness 
none the less. 

L. 404. This gad-fly. The Prince. 

L. 405. Plant a solid foot. She means that she will exert 
an influence that shall go into the future, "the Time." 

L. 420. Our chiefest comfort. The student should not fail 
to make a careful study of the mood of the Princess whenever 
word or deed of hers gives the opportunity. Has she before 
been very thoroughly self-sufficient, and is she so here ? 



NOTES TO PART V. 175 

L. 431. Sloughs. The king means that the Prince is be- 
yond his depth in a slough, led by the will-o'-the-wisp, love. 

L. 441. The gray mare. An old and shrewish woman. 

L. 459. The little clause. In the clause there is, of course. 
a hint of tenderness, but he cannot know whether of natural 
mercy or of awakening warmth towards him. This uncertainty 
of mood in him serves naturally as an introduction to the 
seizure of line 465, accounting for it as well as making the 
transition to it less abrupt. This mood of musing in the 
Prince is further justified by the circumstances in which he 
finds himself, every wish and jjuri^ose overruled by the fiercer 
wills of his father and Prince Arac. 

L. 460. That wild morning. Cf. I. 96. 

L. 468. Memorial tilts. Tilts that have been made memor- 
able. 

L. 483. Into fiery splinters. Note how the personification 
in this line and the following adds to the animation of the con- 
flict, making even the lance and the helmet alive with the pas- 
sion of the battle. 

L. 488. Two bulks. Arac's brothers. 

L. 500. Miriam and a Jael. Hebrew women warriors. 

L. 504. No saint. Note that now his thoughts stir in the 
Prince a sort of blind madness. He goes into the fight, but 
his guiding genius is an unthinking Fury. 

L. 511. Staggering back. Used here in the transitive 
sense, with horse and horseman as its object, 

L. 514. Flaying the roofs. Here we have a double personi- 
fication, serving to increase the intensity of personal malignity 
animating the pillar of electric cloud. . Living creatures are 



176 THE PRINCESS. 

flayed, and towards living creatares only, can one exhibit the 
violence of real passion. 

L. 526. Last I spurr'd. The Prince is the hero of the 
story, and Arac's jjrowess must be shown in contest with others 
before the Prince can be permitted to fall before it. For this, 
his overthrow, his recent seizure has also made preparation, 
since because of it we understand that he is not his best self in 
the battle, and therefore not in so great degree less princely 
for being overthrown. 

PART VI. 

Song. This song serves the artistic purpose of suggesting 
that occasion for tenderness may soften a heart unyielding to 
sterner influences. In all the songs the Child and the influence 
of childhood in the life of men and women are suggested. 
Psyche's child Aglai'a is throughout the poem introduced at 
critical points to affect the mood of the Princess ; but it is 
woman's inherent need of having something to which she may 
minister, that is the fundamental force influencing Ida in the 
end. In woman that feeling most readily directs itself tow- 
ards children, because of their weakness, but man may be 
made its object through sickness or misfortune. Recognition 
of love as a factor in the perfect life comes inevitably when 
one has yielded to this feeling. 

L. 12. And grovelPd on my body. The old king is not 
hard and brutal like Arac. He is as uncompromising as that 
huge giant, but he is human, and for his severity he finds 
justification in his reason. 

L. L'i. Came Psyche. She seems ixnnecessary here, and in 
this is the pitifulness of her coming. 



NOTES TO PART VI. 177 

L. 16. Dame of Lapidoth. Deborah, who sang a song of 
triumph after the defeat of the army of Sisera, whom Jael (cf. 
V. 500) slew with a nail. See Judges iv-v. 

L. 21. A thousand arms. The branches of the tree as they 
spread and grow upward towards the sun. 

L. 25. They mark'd it. This stanza continues the meta- 
phor of the first. Though the leaves are wet with woman's 
tears, and a strange song rustles through them, the wood- 
choppers have marked the tree for the axe. 

L. 34. There dwelt. In the grain of the wood as in the 
strength of her purpose and her power to carry it through. 

L. 38. A night of Summer. Refreshing by the coolness of 
its shade as the coolness of a night in summer. The tree is a 
"breadth of autumn" because of its yielding so much good. 
The song, in comparison with others in the Princess, is cold 
and mechanical. The metaphor, instead of being a poetic 
illumination of the thought, is forced in its continual elabora- 
tion of detail. But this ineffectiveness of the poem in itself is 
another thing in its relation to the story. It springs readily 
enough from the unnatural mood of the Princess, glorying, 
though a woman, in bloodshed, for which she is herself respon- 
sible. The womanly consciousness of this checks the flow of 
her exulting joy. 

L. 44. Violate. Violated. A Latinism. 

L. 47. Blanch'd in our annals. Made memorable, being 
fortunate. 

L. 50. An April. Flowers gathered from the hollows, 
which are so left bare of spring, to be thrown about the 
statues of her three brothers. 



178 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 65, Tremulous isles. Sunbeams flickering tlirougii the 
wind-tossed leaves. 

L. 67. At distance. Lady Blanche is still drawn by the 
powerful personality of the Princess, even when she dares not 
approach her. 

L. 70. Stately fretwork. Antlers. 

L. 83. The old lion. The king, glaring with a whelpless 
eye, because in it there was now the pain of loss of the lion's 
whelp, the Prince. 

L. 90. Tortured. Note how this word, essentially poetic 
and imaginative here, intensifies her pain. 

L. 02. He saved. Consider what mood in her prompts this. 
L. 97. Shore. Sheared. The old past tense. 

L. 110, Great clog. The Princess is still so noble-natured 
that she cannot be satisfied with ingratitude in herself. Until 
she has in some way repaid the Prince for saving her life, slie 
cannot, without feeling herself in the wrong, cast him off and 
go on alone in the fulfilment of her purpose. 

L. 117. The babe. The important part that the child plays 
in the story should not be overlooked. It first wakes in Ida a 
hint of womanliness. See V., 420-427. 

L. 118. Brede. Embroidery, 

L, 120, On tremble. On and a were interchangeable in early 
English, and we say aboard or on board indifferently, 
L. 142, Self-involved. Lost in her own thoughts. 

L. 144, Thro' all her height. Another poet might have 
written, to all her height, but Tennyson feels that the passion 
of her indignation has possessed her whole being. 



NOTES TO PART VI. 179 

L. 166. Port. Portal at which prayer might enter and 
affect her. 

L. 179. Purple. The hue of supreme riclmess, no longer 
delighting her eyes in the distance that has grown gray with 
assurance of failure. 

L. 186. The dead prime. The silent hours after midnight. 

L. 209. I would sooner. Is Arac's pleading prompted by 
sympathy for Psyche, or by the dislike of tears, common to all 
men ? 

L. 218. Just ere she died. The queen expresses rather a 
hope about Ida than an opinion. As death comes to end her 
care of her child, she quiets her anxious fears by declaring that 
the thing she wishes is true. 

L. 221. All people. Note the little things, as in this most 
suggestive line, by which the king paints his own character. 
King though he is, he moulds his judgment by popular opinion. 

LI. 239-240. Sine and arc. Terms in mathematics and 
astronomy. 

L. 251. Wept. This word is peculiarly expressive in indi- 
cating Ida's mood. The languor springs from the mood of 
tears and so can itself be said to weep. 

L. 270. The hollow heart. It may be doubted here 
whether she means that her heart is hollow because of its lone- 
liness, or that the hollowness is in their accusing. Perhaps in 
her yearning for Psyche, and in her pain from the chiding of 
the two kings, both meanings may have had place in her mind 
at once. 

L. 283. Adit. Access. 

L. 289. Mob me up. Mix her up in the mob of woman- 
kind. 



180 THE PIUNCESS. 

L. 298. The mournful song. IV., 21. 

L. 309. Verily I think to win. This point marks the turn 
of our sympathies toward tlie Princess. Lady Blanclie lias 
been necessary in the story for this scene, and after this she 
passes off the stage. So far we have been permitted to see in 
Ida only her unwomanliness, her masculine ambition, her wish 
to unsex herself and all womankind with her; but Lady Blanche 
is infinitely more unlovely. When, after the Princess has 
already had beratings enough and has suffered them in- 
patience, when now Blanche adds the venom of her bitterness, 
we can but take sides with the Princess. This change has 
been fully prepared for, but by introducing Blanche at the 
moment when it is to be expected, she is made to receive the 
current of our disfavor, and the reversion of sentiment towards 
Ida is concealed. 

L. 319. Pharos. A famous, ancient lighthouse on the isle 
of Pharos, near Alexandria. 

L. 330. In the Vestal entry shriek'd. This gives us at once 
the protest at the entrance of men, and the sound itself of iron 
upon marble. 

L. 338. Supporters. The heraldic figures on the sides of 
a coat of arms. 

L. 348. Dian's moon. Diana is painted in the background 
of a sky with a crescent moon showing. Both Pallas and 
Diana are probably statues here, the crescent moon taking, per- 
haps, the form of a bow. 

L. 355. Due. Devoted. The word, of course, suggests 
further the fitness of the room for the use for which it is now 
properly required. 



NOTES TO PART VII. 181 



PART VII. 



Song. This lyric is full of the sweet sadness of love that 
yields unwillingly to love. The reiteration of its theme like a 
plaint is delicately powerful, and it mixes softly with our con- 
ception of a new mood in the Princess. 

L. 8. She not fair began. Woman's natural ofhce of sweet 
and kindly ministration brings beauty, through the beauty of 
the life, into faces to which it had before been lacking. 

L. 17. Clomb. Climbed. 

L. 18. Leaguer. The men leagued together in arms in the 
camp without. 

L. 19. Void was her use. There was now nothing to 
occupy her. ^ 

L. 23. Verge. Horizon. 

L. 25. Tarn. A small dark pond. 

L. 31. Gyres. Circles. . 

L. 32. Lay silent. His soul-self and its consciousness were 
so shut within the body, "the mufified cage of life," that he 
"lay quite sundered from the moving universe." 

L. 50. Those fair charities join'd. Took part with her in 
ministration to others. 

L. 53. Two dewdrops. These three lines furnish an excel- 
lent example of the beauty of Tennyson's figures. 

L. 56. Obtained. Succeeded or prevailed, effective here 
because ft suggests Cyril himself as the subject of the verb in 
the character of suitor. 

L. 60. The babe restored. See V., 101-102. 



182 THE PRINCESS. 

L. 67. Involved in stillness. Implied by her silence. 
L. 75. Satiate. Satisfied or satiated. A Latinism like 
violate in VI. , 44. 

L. 78. In wild delirium. It is to be noted that the jDassages 
containing the weird seizures were not introduced into the 
poem until the fourth edition in 1851. . They are a proper, 
perhaps a necessary, preparation for the delirium which is here 
required to have its subtle influence upon the Princess. 

L. 98. Flourish'd up. "Blossomed up," as in 11., 292, in 
the etymological sense of the word flourish. 

L. 109. The Oppian law. This was a law passed at the 
time when Rome was in the greatest danger from Hannibal. 
By its provisions no woman could wear a gay-colored dress, 
have more than an ounce of gold ornaments, or ride in the 
city in a carriage. On the return of peace the women de- 
manded the repeal of the law, finally securing their end, 
though opposed by one of the consuls, Cato, a lifelong foe to 
the growing luxury and corruption of Rome. 

L. 112. The tax. A tax imposed on Roman matrons by the 
second triumvirate. Hortensia opposed it with such eloquent 
ability that it was repealed. 

L. 135. Stoop down. The moving pathos of this petition 
is a fitting climax for the story. 

L. 148. That other. Aphrodite (Venus) as she rose in 
birth from the barren deeps of the sea, her mother. The 
fancy of the Prince has so dwelt upon the thought of Aphro- 
dite that in his weakness his passion partly identifies her with 
Ida. That she has really kissed him he does not surely know, 
and the loveliness of this description of Aphrodite is the loveli- 
ness of his thought of Ida in his longing for her. 



NOTES TO PART VII. 183 

L. 154. End of mine. My worship for thee, the Princess. 

L. 166. Glimmers on to me. The ghostly glimmer becomes 
a part of her mood. 

L. 167. All Danae. Receptive of the light of the stars, as 
Danae, the daughter of Akrisios, was receptive to the love of 
Zeus when he descended to her in her cell in the form of a 
shower of gold. 

L. 181. A sunbeam. Warmth and light are wasted and 
ineffectual where barrenness has taken the place of life. 

L. 189. Death and Morning. Morning walks first on the 
Silver Horns, twin peaks of the Jungfrau, because they first 
catch the rays of the sun. Death walks with morning, because 
at that elevation life cannot have a home, and even the moun- 
tain-climber must risk the chance of destruction in going so 
high. 

L. 199. Like a broken purpose waste in air. The peculiar 
thing in this figure is that the immaterial is made to illustrate 
the material. 

L. 201. Azure pillars of the hearth. Columns of smoke. 

LI. 206-207. The moan of doves. The perfect beauty of 
these two lines has been the theme of many commentators. 
The soft alliteration and the halting meter of the last line are 
probably unsurpassed, if not unequaled, elsewhere. 

L. 233. Went sorrowing. The image that this figure is to 
produce is perhaps hardly conceivable. We shall have to think 
of her heart as emotionalized memory, and then the conception 
in a spiritual, rather than a material, way becomes possible. 

L. 234. Till notice of a change. Some influence from the 
world outside themselves must come to break the mood that is 



184 • THE PRINCESS. 

upon them. She is lost in her sorrowing and he must be 
dumb with compassion until something gives him occasion for 
speaking. 

L. 245. Out of Lethe. The river of oblivion in the under- 
world. From it, Tennyson means, man comes into life and all 
the fulness of its activities. 

L. 248. The fair young planet. The hope and promise of 
childhood. 

L. 255. Burgeon. Bud. 

L. 308. With music. The stars are poetically thought to 
make music, "the music of the spheres," in their motion. 

L. 335. Is morn to more. The first of many like hours to 
follow. 

L. 337. Athwart the smoke. The rising smoke and heated 
air refract the light from the woodlands so that they seem to 
reel and waver. 

L. 231. Those dark gates. Death. 



CONCLUSION. 
L. 49. Garden. England, 

L. 51. Which keeps her off. The allusion to France that 
follows is certainly a digression, but it has this excuse, that it 
reflects admirably the mood in which the story leaves those 
who have heard it. The things that have been directly touched 
upon in the course of the poem have been exhausted, but the 
mood remains, and reflections upon allied topics that the time 
and place suggest grow from it naturally. It was shortly after 
the publication of the first edition, which does not contaih this 



NOTES TO CONCLUSION. 185 

allusion to France, that that country found herself in the 
throes of the Revolution of 1848, and this probably accounts 
for its introduction. 

L. 70. The narrow seas. The Straits of Dover. 

L. 70. Fill me with a faith. The sane self-poise of Tenny- 
son's temper is one of the most distinct marks of his greatness, 
as it is one of the chief sources of his popularity. With the 
exception of Maud, a healthy optimism flames nobly in all that 
he has written. It grows upon us through the wonder and the 
doubt of In Memoriam, and ia spite of some bitter lines it is 
the fundamental note of both the Locksley Halls. Long ago, 
Poe, writing of Tennyson, declared him the noblest of poets, 
and the criticism of later years gives no reason for altering 
that judgment. 

L. 87. Pine. Pineapples. " 

L. 94. Closed. Inclosed or included. 

L. 97. Rookery. The rooks that belong to a rookery. 



IIsTDEX TO ISrOTES. 



Ammonites. Pr., 15. 

Above their lieads. Pr., 118. 

Agrippina. 11., 71. 

Appraised. 11., 112. 

Aspasia. 11., 323. 

Astriean Age. II., 420. 

Above the darlcness. 111., 6. 

Against tlie pikes. 111., 269. 

All creation. 111., 308. 

And fled. IV., 149. 

Among his shadows. \., 32. 

April ( An). VI., 50. 

At distance, VI., 67. 

All people. VI., 221. 

Adit. VI., 283. 

Azure pillars of the hearth. VII. 

201. 
Athwart the smoke. VII., 337. 

Brake (= broke ). Pr., 42. 
Breath'd the Proctor's dogs. Pr. 

113. 
Bastion'd. I., 106. 
Boss'd. II., 10. 

Bestrode my Grandsire. II., 224. 
Branches current. II., 227. 
Bigger boy (The). II., 382. 
Bassoon. II., 404. 
Balusters. III., 103. 
Breathes full East. III., 215. 
Beard-blown goat. IV., 60. 
Bulbul ( O ). IV., 104. 
Bell-mouth'd glass. IV., 137. 
Bear (The). IV., 194. 
Boles. IV., 243. 
Bubbled. IV., 247. 
Blowzed (= ruddy). IV., 260. 
Blazon'd. IV., 326. 
But there rose. IV., 454. 
Baldness (Their). V., 18. 
Buss'd. v., 213. 



Blanch'd. VI., 47. 

Babe (The). VI., 117. 

Brede. VI., 118. 

Babe restored (The ). VII., 60. 

Burgeon. VII., 255. 

Calumets. Pr., 17. 
Celts. Pr., 17. 
Claymore. Pr., 18. 
Convention. Pr., 128. 
Chimeras. Pr., 199. 
Court-Galen. I., 19. 
Canonized. I., 23. 
Compact. II., 10. 
Clear planet ( Some ) . II., 22. 
Cariau Artemisia. II., 67. 
Clelia. II., 69. 
Cornelia. II., 69. 
Colors gayer, li., 415. 
Came furrowing. III., 2. 
Clang. 111., 90. IV., 415. 
Color (The). III., 276. 
Champaign. 111., 104. 
Corinna's triumph. III., 331. 
Careless, careless. IV., 139. 
Caryatids. IV., 183. 
Castalies. IV., 275. 
Cuckoo. IV., 347. 
Charr'd and wrinkled. V., 58. 
Comes, v., 154. 
Came Psyche. VI., 13. 
Clomb. VII., 17. 
Closed. Cone, 94. 

Dogs. Pr., 113. 
Dowagers. Pr., 141. 
Dame. II., 97. 
Danaid ( The ). II., 319. 
Diotima. III., 285. 
Dragg'd my brains. IV., 136. 
Druid rock. IV., 261. 



187 



188 



THE PRINCESS. 



Dead hush ( The ). IV., 371. 
Doubt (The). IV., 538. 
Di'aggled mawkin ( A). V., 25. 
Desire in me. V., 230. 
Dame of Lapidoth. VI., 16. 
Dead prime ( The ) . VI. , 186. 
Dian's moon. VI., 348. 
Due. VI.. 355. 
Danae(Aln. VII., 167. 
Death and Morning. VII., 189. 

Echo answer'd. Pr., 66. 
Enter'd on the boards. II., 60. 
Empty hull (An). II., 376. 
Encarnalize their spirits. III., 298. 
End of mine. VII., 154. 

Frets. I., 163. 

Forms (= benches). II., 87. 

Foundress of the Babylonian wall. 

II., 66. 
Fulmined. II., 117. 
For Solomon. II., 328. 
Falsely brown. II., 426. 
Fates (The). II., 443. 
Fell to canvass. III. 24. 
Fabled nothing fair. III., 120. 
Fiery gulf (The). III., 270. 
Favor. IV., 579. 
From the sheath. V., 28. 
Foursquare. V., 222. 
Fiery Sirius. V., 252. 
Foughten. V., 287. 
False daughter. V., 319. 
Flush her babbling wells. V., 324. 
Flaying the roofs. Y., 514. 
Flourish'd up. VII., 98. 
Fair young planet (The). VII., 248. 
Fill me with a faith. Cone, 76. 

Gothic ruin. Pr., 225. 

Great labor of the loom (A). I., 43. 

Grow long. I., 58. 

Grate on rusty hinges. I., 85. 

Guerdon silence. I., 201. 

Gave. I., 226. 

Graces. II., 13. 

Garth. II., 209. 

Gaunt old Baron. II., 222. 

Glean. II. 241. 

Ganymedes. III., 55. 

Grew inosculated. III., 73. 



Gynfeceum. III., 262. 
Gulistan. IV., 104. 
Glares ruin. IV., 474. 
Gagelike. V., 170. 
Gad-fly (This). V., 404. 
Gray mare (The). V., 441. 
Groveird on my body (And). VI 

12. 
Great clog. VI., 110. 
Gyres. VII., 31. 
Glimmers on to me. A^II., 166. 
Garden. Cone, 49. 

Half-canonized. I., 23. 

Holp (=. helped). I., 198. 

Headed like a star. II., 94. 

Her mother's color. II., 304. 

Half this world (Of). II., 270. 

Hitting all. II., 444. 

Hebes. III., 97. 

Hush'd amaze (The). III., 122. 

Hangs. III., 299. 

Hope, a poising eagle. TV., 64. 

H unter rued (The) . 1 ^' . , 1 85 . 

Haled. IV., 252. 

Had gone. IV., 310. 

Herded ewes. IV., 458. 

Her that talk'd down. V., 284. 

Her will. V., 340. 

He saved. VI., 92. 

Hollow heart (The). VI., 270. 

Ideal. II., 38. 

In rubric. III., 34. 

Issue. III., 227. 

Ithacensian suitors. IV., 100. 

I pitied her. IV., 211. 

I bear. IV., 404. 

In this frequence. IV., 422. 

Involved. IV., 430. 

In the teeth. IV., 445. 

Innumerous. V., 13. 

Idiot legend (That). V., 146. 

Into fiery splinters. V., 483. 

In the vestal entry shriek'd. VI. 

330. 
Involved in stillness. VII., 67. 
Is morn to more. VII., 335. 

Justlier balanced. II., 52. 
Jewels (And). II., 355. 
Judith (A). IV., 207. 



INDEX TO NOTES. 



189 



Jael. v., 500. 

Just ere she died. VI., 218. 

Laborious orient ivory. Pr., 20. 
Lighter than a tire. Pr., 92. 
Laid about them. Pr., 31. 
Lost their Aveeks. Pr., 161. 
Liberties. I., 170. 
Light coin. II., 41. 
Lycian custom. II., 112. 
Lay at wine. II., 113. 
Lars. II., 113. 
Lucunio. II., 113. 
Laws Salique, II., 117. 
Lapt (= enfolded). .II., 151. 
Lucius Junius Brutus. II., 264. 
Limed ourselves. III., 126. 
Lean and wrinkled. IV., 4. 
Laiy Blanche (The). IV., 271. 
Less grain. IV., 314. 
Long breezes. IV., 411. 
Lapt in wreaths. IV., 415. 
Landskip (= landscape). IV., 426. 
Lord you. IV., 523. 
Lightens scorns. V., 125. 
Lifting (The). V., 134. 
Lines of green. V., 188. 
Living hearts (Of). V., 369. 
Little clause (The). V., 459. 
Last. I spurr'd. V., 526. 
Lapidoth (Dame of). VI., 16. 
Leaguer. VII., 18. 
Lay silent. VII., 32. 
Like a broken purpose. VII., 199. 
Lethe (Out of). VII., 245. 

Malayan crease. Pr., 21. 
Masque. I., 195. 
Muses. II., 13, IV., 468. 
Made to gild. II., 215. 
Much I bear. III., 65. 
Memnon(A). III., 100. 
Might have seem'd. III., 186. 
Moulder'd lodges. IV., 45. 
Marsh-divers. IV., 105. 
Meadow-crake. IV., 105. 
Mock-Hymen. IV., 126. 
Musky-circled. IV., 242. 
Mnemosyne. TV., 250. 
Mystic fire. IV., 255. 
Mews. IV., 263. 
Mask Avas patent (Their). IV., 307. 



Maiden banner. IV., 482. 
Mawkin. V., 25. 
Maiden moon (A). V., 178. 
Minted in the golden. V., 186. 
Mooted, v., 195. 
Memorial tilts. V., 468. 
Miriam. V., 500. 
Mob me up. VI., 289. 
Mournful song (The). VI., 298. 
Moan of doves (The). VII., 206, 

No more of deadly. II., 208. 

Niobean (A). IV., 352. 

No saint. V., 504. 

Night of Summer (A). VI., 38. 

Narrow seas (The). Cone, 70. 

Odalisques. II., 63. 

Of the older. II., 439. 

Our weakness. III., 313. 

Other distance (The). IV., 68. 

O Swallow. IV., 75. 

O Bulbul. IV., 104. 

Our chiefest comfort. V., 420. 

Old lion (The). VI., 83. 

On tremble. VI., 126. 

Obtain'd. VII., 56. 

Oppian law (The). VII., 109. 

Proxy-wedded. I., 33. 

Pallas. I., 219. 

Palmyrene. II., 69. 

Pales" (= fence). II., 126. 

Prime. III., 111. 

Poor boy. III., 198. 

Peace. III., 230. 

Pou sto. III., 246. 

Passion. III., 264. 

Planted level feet. 1\., 12. 

Proper to. IV., 227. 

Planed. IV., 296. 

Public use. IV., 317. 

Persephone. IV'., 419. 

Placid marble Muses. IV., 468. 

Protomartyr. IV., 484. 

Push them out. 1 \'., 527. 

Parle (= parley). V., 110. 

Piebald. V., 190. 

Prophetic pity. V., 371. 

Plant a solid foot. V., 405. 

Port. 'VI., 166. 

Purple. VI., 179. 



190 



THE PRINCESS. 



Pharos. VI., 319. 
Pine. Cone, 87. 

Rapt. I.,'218. 11., 419. IV., 162,411. 

Rose her height. II., 27. 

Redound. II., 28. 

Read. Pr., 176. 

Rliodope. II., 68. 

Ruin. II., 320. 

Retinue. III., 179. 

Rough kex. IV., 59. 

Regal compact. IV., 401. 

Remorseful Cyril. V.,76. 

Rods of steel. V., 114. 

Ribs of wreck. V., 141. 

Right or wrong (And). V., 280. 

Rookery. Cone, 97. 

So moulder'd. Pr., 180. 

Some sorcerer. I., 6. 

SnoAv'd it down. I., 60. 

Silver sickle. 1., 100. 

Such a hand. I., 233. 

Sang. II., 8. 

Sabine. II., 65. 

Sappho. II., 148. 

Softer Adams. II., 180. 

Sirens tho' they be. II., 181. 

Stomacher. II., 385. 

Sorcerer's malison. II., 388. 

State of things (The). III., 68. 

Shiver. III., 74. 

Samian Hert; (The). III., 99. 

Sandy footprint (The). III., 254. 

South-sea-isle taboo. 111., 261. 

Sphered. IV., 129. 

Stretch'd. IV., 344. 

Stared in. IV., 358. 

Spoke impetuously. IV., 398. 

Sphered up with 'Cassiopeia. IV., 

418. 
Stroke (A). IV., 503. 
She floated. IV., 505. 
Set into sunrise. IV., 553. 
Stationary voice. V., 2. 
Smoke (A). V. 124. 
Shards with catapults. V., 132. 
Satyr. V., 179. 
Severer in the logic. V., 182. 
Shadow (The). V., 248. 
'Sdeath. Y., 266. 
Striplings (The). V., 389. 



Sloughs, v., 431. 
Staggering back. V.,511. 
Stately fretAvork. VI., 70. 
Shore (sheared). VI., 97. 
Self-involved. VI., 142. 
Sine and arc. VI., 239. ' 
Supporters. VI., 338. 
She not fair began. VII., 8. 
Satiate. VII., 75. 
Sunbeam (A). VII., 181. 

Their Institute. Pr., 5. 

Tyrant (The). Pr., 202. 

Thro' one wide chasm. Pr., 93. 

Therewithal (= thercAvith). I., 44. 

Tilth and grange. I., 109. 

That taught the Sabine. II., 65. 

To the trumpet. II., 214. 

Tho' madam. II., 332. 

Thirsty plants. II., -JOO. 

Those lilies. III., 52. 

That practice betters. III., 282. 

TofolloAVup. IV., 446. 

Turnspits for the cloAvn. IV., 495. 

Transient. V., 37. 

Trampled year (The). \., 121. 

Tho' dash'd. V., 157. 

Truer. V., 181. 

Thousand rings (A). V., 227. 

Three stars (Those). V., 250. 

Tomyris. V., 355. 

Two bulks, v., 488. 

Thousand arms (A). VI., 21. 

They mark'd it. VI., 25. 

There dAvelt. VI., 34. 

Tremulous isles. VI., 65. 

Tortured. VI., 90. 

Thro' all her height. VI., 144. 

Tarn. VII., 25. 

Those fair charities joined. VII., 

50. 
Two dewdrops. VII., 53. 
Tax (The). VII., 112. 
That other. VII., 148. 
Those dark gates. VII., 341. 

Uranian Venus. 1., 239. 

A^erulam. II., 144. 
Vacant pang. II., 381. 
Vulcans. III., 56. 
Vashti. III., 212 and 215. 



INDEX TO NOTES. 



191 



Valkyrian hymns. IV., 121. 
Vague brightness. IV., 409. 
Violate. VI., 44. 
Verily, I think to win. VI., 309. 
Void was her use, VII., 19. 
Verge. VII., 23. 

Winter's tale. Pr., 231. 

Weird seizures. I., 14. 

Without a star. I., 116. 

Wrinkling wind. I., 114. 

Wisp. Pr., 64. IV., 339. 

Woaded. II., 105. 

We will seat. III., 143. 

Where paced. III., 325. 

When unto dying eyes. IV., 33. 

Wild tigtree. IV., 61. 

When we made bricks. IV., 110. 

Warmer currents. IV., 2S2. 

Whereby. IV., 359. 

When tlie wild. IV., 366. 

With foam. IV., 453. 



Woman-slough. V., 38. 
What have you done. V., 62. 
What might. V., 101. 
Whole, v., 185. 
White hands. V., 223. 
Wandering hand (A). V., 259. 
With solemn rites. V., 282. 
What mother's blood. V., 394. 
Wild morning (That). V., 460. 
Wept. VI., 251. 
Wild deliriimi (In). VII., 78. 
Went sorrowing. VII., 233. 
With music. VII., 308. 
Which keeps her off. Cone, 51. 

Your example pilot. III., 121. 
Yet I. IV., 301. 
Your mother. V., 159. 
You clash, v., 172. 

Zone unmann'd. II., 398. 



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